PAINTING ANIMALS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 86, 11 April 1923, Page 10

PAINTING ANIMALS

AN ARTIST'S PREFERENCE

WORK AT .SYDNEY.

"When I was a little girl all my dolls went to Africa in lumbering caravans, and when right cut on the ve]4t or in the middle of the jungle they had most thrilling adventures with lions," said Miss Mabel Barling, Sydney's best-known wor man painter of animals, to a "Sun" re? porter recently. "I could never be bothered making pretty olpthes for the dolls —they were lucky if they got even a decent covering—and the adventures were always with lions-. I have been attached to lions all tny life, and my best work has bean my studies of the lovely creatures."

The king of the forest has no terrors foF this slip of a, girl, who has mad« pets of all the lions»at the Zoo. In the old Moore Park Zoo Miss Barling had special permission to go behind the rails, and she made a favourite pet of one 01 the youngsters, whom she called' Puss. There was, another who, upon inquiry, ijsed to hold up his leg to get a little sympathy fpr.his rheumatism. "If you're frightened," said Miss Barljpff> "you oan't do anything with them. Lions are just like dogs—aflfSbtlonate, understanding animals. Tigers are beautiful oreature* to look at, But I don't like them. They always seem to me untrustful.

Sli» Barlinp spends most of her time at the Sydney Zoo, sketching. Then olay models are made from the (sketches, ana grouped on a table so as toget the effect of relative distances and light. A* present she is working on an impression of the "Four Horsemen of the Apooalypse," and; In her studio at her Mosman home are four clay horses and their riders swung on a string. The horses hw« all the vigor of galloping animals, and the models are complete even to paper soales suspended by eqUpn threads, «na a bow and arrow mad© of hairpws : I» there any ptiVpoae to whioh a/ hairpin cannot be put? ' - Manj sketchy were made for Anno Domini 6C," and then the city models were placed in posfyjori before a wall ol bricks built up on the table. When everything" was fixed to her satisfaction, and the Ugh* adjusted isthat the shadow of the Cross fell in thS^right p »?e, the artist got to work with hpr palette ana Tl though' she has painted, nearly all anirwlft. Miss Berlins remanrs faithful in her preferenoe-Jor. lions. '^Yet Kotos a point ».tput vtisers"*» ?aid. . 'Tho stripes don't go round and round, as you might imagine. J?very movement alters the stripe, and it's a fasoinating business ohwrinfr lines' whioh: are almost as elusive as shadows. And when a lion greets you affectionately he. doesn't rpar; he yawns widely in a. most bored and rude fwrann. Monkeys I don't like; they are » clioeky lot and far too human to hiv© .anything but an uncanny effect on me. J-skeMnes a lot of them for some pictures I did for Kipling's' "Jungle Bppk," but I don t paint them for'pleasure. I remember, though. on» old mother monkey Bitting u.p in a stately fashion nursing her baby and contemplating the sky. Her Ion? tail was hanging- down, and a couple Pt bonnet monk<*y&-^or afl the world like dirty-faoed, naughty schoolboys—swung on her tail to a taller branch of the tree. Tho mother monkey sat up in superior anger, and then folded hor toil round her like a duchies might gather up the traan of her gown." ' ■' . Mias Barling showed some pictures of Australian animals, and told a story about the Tasmaman marsupial wolf. "One day the, wolf went to s|eev>. and he injudiciously curled himself up next to the cage'of the, pum#, and' his {.ail went thrpujh the b>rs. The- puma must have been hungry, or, perhaps, he had- a grudge against' the ' wo!f; but, at any, rate,'when the wolf woke v.V> he only hail a slump instead of a tail. It never grew again. So in ail my pictures he had ta be set so that his little bit of tail gredur ally fadted out into some corner, because nobody could tel} me how long hits" tail had been." Th,e w.alls of Miss BjtriJng p studio are covered with sketches of animals, and prominent place is held by a picture, of '•Peary," one'of the 4bgs whioh was pulLins" in the traces when AmundsenVsledge reached tW North' Polo. \ "Poary" was given to Mawson, from whom. Miss Bar-. ne; obtained permission to paint the fine old dog. i