ART GALLERY

Evening Star, Issue 19894, 16 June 1928, Page 12

ART GALLERY

HEW PICTURES PURCHASED It was decided last night by the president and council of tho Dunedin Public Art Gallery Society to purchase two important water colours from Mr Murray Fuller’s exhibition_ of British contemporary art now being held in tho Early Settlers’ Flail. The new acquisitions arc excellent examples of the work of Sir Herbert Hughes-Stantou, R.A., P.R.W.S., and Mr Leo Hankey, R.W.S., R.E. The titles are I Le Buy de Dome, Franco,’ and ‘ The Bargain.’ Both are in water colour. The exhibition was largely attended yesterday, and to-day by art lovers, and will remain open all next week from 10 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. Though, as stated in our preliminary notice of Mr Murray Fuller’s exhibition, the tendency nowadays is to commercialise art, this does not apply to artists of tho rank of those distinguished painters from whom he has procured examples. It is only by making them interested in New Zealand that they can be induced to allow their work to come to this parfeof the w.orld. Some, of course, are already -interested in our dominion in one way or another. Mr Annesby Brown, R.A., for example, a distinguished English landscape painter, who paints but few pictures, and is discriminating'as to subject, can easily sell in London all that lie produces. People arc asking for bis work. Mr Murray Fuller was able to procure two of Mr Annesby Brown’s pictures, one of which was sold in Wellington, tho other being now in the collection brought to Dunedin. Both were sought- for by willing purchasers before they left England. Eagerness is also shown in the Old Country to acquire the paintings of other notable artists. It is a mistake to suppose that these artists are hard up. At the Royal Academy of 1927 the attendance and the sales constituted a record, and at tho Royal Watercolour Society’s exhibition more than half tho exhibits were sold the first night.