Artfull has ended—now what comes after?

Press, 23 February 1985, Page 19

Artfull has ended —now what comes after?

By

JULIE KING,

senior lecturer in art

history at the University of Canterbury.

There is no doubt that it was an enormously popular success; since November, 41,000 visits were made to Artfull. Now that the show has been laboriously dismantled, a sense of emptiness appears on the walls of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery. Gone are the grand exhibition pictures of the Victorians. Henrietta Rae’s “Doubts,” honoured with its heavy gold frame and once hung on the line at the Royal Academy, has been carried off, screaming, into the basement. Henriette Brown’s “Bible Reading” was once hung during the Second Empire in the Empress Eugenie’s collection in France but it, too, descended, sulking, into the McDougall’s dark depths. These are amongst the best known pictures in the gallerly, but there were dozens more which I had never seen before and which many visitors had not seen since they were children. Artfull — what was it? An orchestrated exercise in nostalgia? A chance to discover new pictures and get to know the collection? A cause for cultural discomfort for our fathers’ fathers who had chosen

Rae instead of Whistler? A ques-tion-raiser about our current acquisitions lest our sons’ sons accuse us by later excusing us? The show was never designed as an exhibition; it had no coherent structure or grouping of works, although so persuasive is art history that paintings of the same age and from the same place all tended to stick together. Sometimes, it seemed that the paintings were hung where they would fit in a good old-fashioned way, on the line or skied. (One Canterbury contemporary was heard to complain that even he had been skied.) Deliberately, there was no intervention of order and imposed sense in the hanging, with the intention that each member of the public could look for herself or himself at individual works. The gallery’s intention was to let the people get to the works; here, then, are some responses. What Artfull revealed, along with a careful reading of the recently published catalogue of the McDougall’s collection, was the growth of the gallery and developments in our local cultural history which it would be illuminating to

explore further. This would also place all current acquisitions in context.

The works shown represented 100 years of public and private collecting in the city and region. When the gallery opened, the basis of the collection came from James Jamieson and the Canterbury Society of Arts. The society had begun to collect works in 1881, only a year after its formation. From the beginning, it was collecting paintings as a way of supporting its members and “cultivating the Fine Arts.”

Their yearly purchases were building contemporary reputations and, by these selections, they were establishing models of taste for the public. Their purchase, in 1881, by Christchurch’s first resident professional oil painter, John Gibb, was “Shades of Evening, The Estuary.” In the following years came the big three of watercolour landscape

painting — John Gully, W. M. Hodgkins, and J. C. Richmond.

Then, in 1886, the society changed direction and looked to ‘Home,” writing to the president of the Royal Academy, Lord Leighton, to select works in London for them. By 1906-7, their cultural appetite had grown so that the society raised £2442 to buy paintings from the International Exhibition at Christchurch.

One thousand pounds was spent on Lord Leighton’s “Teresina;” it was, perhaps, a safe bdy by an established figure, although the enterprise of spending so much money on one small painting of high quality, showed courage. It is, also, perhaps characteristic of the South Island’s longer lingering glances “Home” that so much was spent on British art by the Canterbury Society of Arts. The Auckland Society of Arts, for .instance, concentrated at the beginning on buy-

ing New Zealand paintings. It was, of course, then as today, generally less expensive. John Gibb’s "Shades of Evening, The Estuary” cost about £25 in 1881.

In retrospect, the early ventures of the Canterbury Society of Arts in its selection of British and New Zealand works appears as fairly conservative but certainly energetic and dedicated. There were also missed opportunities. The Otago Art Society, probably guided by W. M. Hodgkins, had been quicker to recognise the importance of Christchurch’s Dutch resident, Van der Velden, than was the Canterbury society. They bought from their 1892 exhibition his “Waterfall in the Otira Gcrge,” now in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, and “Old Jack” in the following year, whereas the Canterbury society did not acquire its “Mountain Stream, Otira Gorge” until about 20 years after it was painted. When the McDougall opened in 1932 with the basis of its collection coming from the Canterbury society and private individuals, the numbers of British and New Zealand paintings were about equal and the dominant style was Victorian or Academic. Contemporary artists were quick to see that the McDougall was exhibiting and, thereby seeming to uphold, only a narrow range of painting to public taste.

The opening of the McDougall in the 1930 s also occurred in a decade in New Zealand when artists were consciously developing modern expression. In Christchurch, the recently formed Group shows were throughout the 1930 s winning a reputation for being experimental.

From its beginnings, both the role of the McDougall and its collection were argued over. Sydney Thompson complained that the “trouble is that these pictures represent only the Royal Academy painting . . . Art is, however, very much alive and is not static, and we cannot afford to stay put . . . Collections overseas included one or more paintings of each School, and that was what was wanted in Christchurch.”

In 1938, Thompson selected several works in Paris for the McDougall from the £2OO bequest of Miss Schlesinger. His choice included a small, lively painting, “In the Woods” by Othon Friesz, a painter who had pioneered Fautvism early in the twentieth cen-\

tury. Unfortunately, this small group of paintings did not go far towards his aim of bringing a good collection of paintings to Christchurch from Europe. Since the turn of the century, of course, New Zealand painters had developed by discovering other traditions of painting than that of the British, and many of them, such as Thompson, Weeks, Mclntyre, and Hodgkins, had explored modern trends at their source in France. It was Thompson’s wish to bring some of these works to the Christchurch public; he lamented: “Must they always go to Europe? Why not bring some of the pictures here?”

It was on the face of it an ideal solution, but it reveals more about the aspirations of expatriate painters of the time than ever representing a practical possibility for the McDougall. These few French works reveal an aspect of our cultural heritage: the longing of the donor, Miss Schlesinger, and the painter, Sydney Thompson, to bring a little bit of France back home to Christchurch in the 19305. Perhaps, it is an attribute which economics — the price of European paintings and an acquisition budget of $61,000 — forces us today to discard as unrealistic. At any rate, the McDougall has recently put its money on New Zealand painting. Where does that leave our small collection of French paintings? As a dead collection, but part of our cultural development. If no additions of European paintings are made from bequests or from the acquisitions budget during the 1980 s, that will represent another phase in our cultural history. What does emerge from looking at Artfull is just how much the collection owes to donations and bequests. This is not unusual in New Zealand or abroad and most galleries’ collections reflect the generosity and the tastes of the people. Until 1949, the growth of the McDougall was totally dependent on these sources. Despite the current $61,000 acquisitions budget from the City Council, present and future growth would benefit enormously from the community’s contributions to the gallery. It is not unusual for major New Zealand works to cost $lO,OOO and this represents a large part of the budget. Many other points emerged from Artfull; it focused interest on the current acquisitions policy which, in painting, concentrates on New

Zealand work. For the past five years, 60 per cent of the budget has v been spent on contemporary New Zealand paintings which have been chosen with the intention of putting on record major artistic work in the region and country. Both the aim and the degree of success in its fulfilment have been challenged. An opportunity for discussion was provided by the last forum meeting in the McDougall on February 10. Hopefully, further discussion will be generated by a full show at the end of 1985 of this .year’s acquisitions. There were also some gaps shown up by the Artfull presentation; the small representation of was obvious. In a country

where there has been a strong tradition of watercolour painting, only one room was devoted to it; and in a gallery which takes pride in its print collection, it was curious that prints made such a brief appearance. More presentations of the collection’s prints and watercolours and more opportunity to see sculpture would all be welcome. This should not interfere with a lively programme of loan exhibitions which has begun this month with Olivia Spencer-Bower and Raymond Mclntyre. How is all this to be achieved? Artfull, the massed presentation of the collection, was, also, a strong presentation of the case for a new or a<«tional gallery. • w