ART GALLERY PICTURES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 33, 8 February 1940, Page 10

ART GALLERY PICTURES

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —I have read lately criticisms in regard to the quality of some of the pictures now on exhibition at the National Art Gallery, which call for some comment.

One does not have to be art-minded to be charmed with the countless number of delightful exhibits. Nature is displayed in all her varying moods. To appreciate it all one must approach this exhibition in the right mood, remembering that ideas are the great things in art, without which pictures are surely dull displays of technical skill. The success and the life of a picture depend upon its emotional quality, which is the soul of art. Nature and its contemplation awake in the mind of the real artist an effort to record a thing of beauty. The result is not a mere copy from Nature, but a product of the human mind, the artist being concerned with effects and not with facts. What the artist has seen he must portray in his own way or if he has a story to tell he must tell it in his own way. Even still life objects can be full of emotion. A too rigid system of rendering would force all art work into the same groove, resulting in formality of expression and the killing of originality. The saddest thing about art is that living prices are usually paid for an artist's work after he has long passed away and cannot benefit by them, nor is his work appreciated until he has long ceased to exist. A case in point is that of the great French artist Corot, who painted to satisfy his art instincts. Although his pictures aroused no enthusiasto during his lifetime he went on,*painting for thirty years without selling a single picture. In America alone. since his death, no fewer than 18,000 "original" Corots are said to have been sold and some at fabulous prices, whereas during the whole of his lifetime Corot painted only 3000. The gentle artist evidently found delight in toil, and no wonder then that the fruits of his life were so fine and so plentiful, in spite of all difficulties.

It seems to me a great pity that the authorities are not hiore enterprising in exploiting the great exhibition of paintings now on view at the National Art Gallery. Every medium of advertising should be exploited. The public of: Wellington may never get another opportunity of seeing such a wonderful exhibition of ai-t in this city.—l am, etc.,

LOUIS C. FAMA,