Chch painters and paintings

Press, 13 July 1989, Page 24

Chch painters and paintings

“Harbour View”. Robert McDougall Art Gallery. Until August 24. Reviewed by Julie King. “Harbour View” and “Artists on the Avon” are significant exhibitions at the McDougall: each presents historical and more recent paintings of the region. Both share the same lively exhibition concept; they are organised around the notion of place and bring together pictures which reveal how painters have perceived and defined their surroundings since early settlement times. This focus yields some rich responses; viewing is channelled towards exploring how a sequence of paintings of the same region reveals a range of cultural images. Such an underlying framework makes an interesting change from the structure of a one-artist show. Chronologically, the

works begin with early settlement and the contrasting views of Raworth’s romantic grandiloquence and Norman’s visionary statements of matter-of-fact clarity. The heights to which Raworth’s imagination aspired, spurred on by emulation of Turner, is seen in the sublime conflagration of the “Great Fire at Lyttelton.” John Gibb was probably Christchurch’s first resident professional oil painter and he delighted in painting pictures which were an optimistic celebration of settlers’ lives and achievements. Two large oil paintings describe what must have been a common although nonetheless thrilling experience of being on board a sailing ship propelled by an easterly and racing past Godley Head for the Pacific Ocean.. A contrast which underlines the nature of devel-

opments in the region is represented by Gibb’s picturesque views of Corsair Bay and Rapaki and his painting of Lyttelton Harbour with its busy, varied and crowded shipping life in the late nineteenth century.

Trends in twentiethcentury painting are represented: two well-known views of the harbour by Sydney Lough Thompson and Evelyn Page, both lively colourists, are included as well as works by Cecil Kelly. This region was a favourite sketching ground for Kelly and these paintings reveal the delicacy and subtlety of his sometimes under-rated tonal impressionism. Later artists’ concerns were with both the shapes of land and harbour and with the structure of their painting; in Doris Lusk’s watercolour her placing of each painted line on the paper appears para-

doxically free and yet quite unchangeable.

“Harbour View” has been put together by a curator who knows the historical territory and the show has drawn on some fine works from local private and public collections. Its hanging, however, presented some problems. A decision to hang works according to a precise locale rather than a . rough chronology tended to break down the coherence of the show as well as result in some incompatible couplings. For example, Gopas and Gibb hung together made an unhappy pair and did little for each other. What will follow after these exhibitions? Hopefully some more carefully selected shows of images of the regional landscape — the Estuary, the Plains, the Southern Alps and the cultural icons of Mount Cook and the Marlborough Sounds.