AN ARTIST RETURNS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 82, 8 April 1925, Page 15

AN ARTIST RETURNS

FRUITS OF STUDY ABROAD.

After thirteen years' absence from New Zealand, Miss Maud Kimbell—now Mrs. Sherwood—returns to Wellington, bringing her sheaves with her. These are represented by a small and carefullychosen [carefully-chosen] selection of her work painted in several countries and under various impulses. Pupil of Nairn, a painter who left his definite mark on New Zealand art, Mrs. Sherwood went to Europe to work. She did well in Wellington and elsewhere before she went, but not in her own modest estimation as she felt she ought to do. So after study under Mabel Hill and Miss Richardson (now Mrs. M. E. Tripe), and then Nairn, she went to South Kensington, and the gates of that famous art school swung open to her by virtue of her winning the national gold medal, which the late Richard John Seddon formally handed to her. She spent much time and with profit in France, and there met Miss Frances Hodgkins, Sydney Thompson and his wife, and Owen Merton, all friendly New Zealanders, all seeking artistic inspiration and direction far away from home. To the ateliers of the celebrated Collarossi and subseqeuntly [subsequently] to Tudor Hart. The latter was a wonderful man on colour and brimful of his subject, bubbling, overflowing with it in fact, as Mrs. Sherwood found. But she acknowledges her profound indebtedness to him for much that she knows and (going by her work) successfully applies. Mrs. Sherwood sketched much in England, Holland, and Brittany. Speaking of Australia, she said one had a large field or market there for one's works and the returns were high. But it was not always the wealthy who bought pictures. It was often people of moderate means, who felt the need of them, and would buy them possibly at a sacrifice in some cases. She instanced the case of the owner of a sumptuously furnished flat in the absolutely best part of Sydney, overlooking Government House grounds. "In that flat (he said) carte blanche had been given to the furnishers, and the curtains, I was told, cost £200. From what I saw of them I think they did. There were many beautiful things in furniture and in porcelain vases and other ornaments ; and— one picture. That, too, was a gift. "This is not an unusual case ; but don't take me to mean that pictures are not preferred to oleographs in Australia. They are. There is a decided advance being made in art in Australia and in the cultivation of the taste for art. From the little I have been able to see on my return to New Zealand I think that holds good here, too." Then Mrs. Sherwood began to talk about the "colour" of Wellington. It was wonderful in its beauty and elusiveness. It was her desire, she said, to see painted a really great picture of Wellington and its majestic hills—not, of course, anything in the nature of a photographic panorama, but a truly great picture, one worthy of so grand a subject.

Mrs. Sherwood is holding an exhibition of her works at the Whitmore Street Gallery, and she greatly appreciates, she says, the honour done her by the Academy of Fine Arts in postponing its sketch exhibition to enable her to hold her "show." This is to be opened next week with a private view by Mr. L. W. Hunt, president of the academy.