VALUABLE PORTRAITS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 52, 25 November 1930, Page 8

VALUABLE PORTRAITS

Van Dyck and Franz Hals Two of the special private exhibits at the Otago Art Society’s show last week were a portrait of A. van Dyck, the celebrated Dutch painter, by the equally dstinguished Franz Hals (the painter of “The Laughing Cavalier,” probably the most copied and reproduced portrait in oils in the world), and one of Hals by van Dyck. Both were painted in May, 1629. The curious will wonder how works by such artists came to be in New Zealand. It seems that they were lent to the society by Mr. Charles Aves, a visitor, to whom they were bequeathed by his father, who died in England three years ago. The Hals portrait by van Dyck was originally acquired in Holland by Mr. Aves’s grandfather, Mr. James Aves (who went to Holland in connection with the building of gasworks at The Hague and at Rotterdam in 1853. He remained in Holland nil his life and died at The Hague in 1887. I?iie portrait then came into the possession of the present owner’s father. The portrait by Hals came to the same family through the parents of the owner’s mother. Dutch people of The Hague. The paintings are to he exhibited in Wellington toward the end of the week, together with a pastel by J. M. Whistler, one of the fifty-two Venetian studios.