ART LECTURES

Evening Star, Issue 20254, 15 August 1929, Page 2

ART LECTURES

‘ MASTERPIECES 111 PORTRAITURE ’ ‘ Masterpieces in Portraiture ’ was the subject ot the last ot the senes oi art lec-ures by the dev. oames B-.nis at Knox College last night, Mr P. 11. Sargood presiding over a large attendance. , . The desire of people to have their portraits painted, said the lecturer, arose from the pardonaulo weakness of wishing to be admired when alive and remembered when dead, bupernciahy it might be regarded as an easy thing to paint a portrait, requiring only mod 01 ate artistic gifts. On the contrary, it required the hignest. Most people, it asked what constituted a good portrait, would answer: ‘‘A good likeness.” But if that were all, then why not bo content with a photograph!' A photograph would give a uio.e per.ecr likeness in some respects than any portrait, and it had this additional advantage that it would cost only a few shillings whereas a portrait will cost several hundred pounds. * The difference between a photograph and a portrait, h« pointed mt, was chat the one was the work of a machine, and could record only surface facts, while the other was the intern, .tation of a Jiving personality by a living and an artistic mindi An artist could not place bis subject m, a chair as a photo grapher could, and set immediately to work. The first task of the artist was to get down beneath surface facts, the colour of eyes and hair, the s ! \ane ol the brow, and so on and to get the essential character of the person he was to paint. What was required before the painter even touched his canvas was a searching power of analysis, a swift and unerring grasp of essentials, and then the power to place these on canvas in a way that would.he at once truthful and pictorial. That was why a por trait had living interest even after t l '- person painted was long dead and gone. “Often ! have found the portrait," said'Carlyle, ‘superior in real institution to half a dozen written hiograpli ies; or rather I have found the portraits as a small candle by -which the biographies could for the first time bo road, arid some human interpretation made of them.”

Another interesting fact in portrait painting was that the painter not only revealed the character ot th'e person ha was painting—he also revealed his own. This the lecturer proved in the concluding part of his lecture by throwing on the screen three portraits ot Mrs Siadons, the famous actress, painted by Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Lawrence. Each of these were great portraits, but each differed m almost every respect the one from the other Mr Burns then analysed the character and personality -of the individual artist, and showed how the selection of treatment arose from these characteristics, and from the fact that no two persons see alike. The lecturer then proceeded to show slides of some oi the great portraits of the different schools of painting, lii the Italian school the ‘ Mona Lisa ’ of Leonardo da Vinci, ‘The Concert’ bv Giorgione, and ‘Man With the Glove'* fay ritian, were selected as of superlative genius. Many interesting slides wo rG shfwn illustrating the work o? Bombi'iindt If runs Hals. Durer, especial notice being given to the great of Holbein and those of Van Dyke. Special attention was given by the lecturer to the Spanish school as illustrated in the work of Velasquez, whose searching characterisation, tho torturer stated, placed him in the first tank, and whose subtle treatment ofatmosphere marked him as the first of the impressionists and an artist who had deeply affected the art of the twentieth century. English am! Scottish portraiture rewaled the high standard reached by the great artists of the eighteenth century, and the lecturer dosed with an analysis of the work of Whistler's * Mother.’ At the conclusion of the Chairman moved a vote of thanks +o Mr Burns, and stated that those who Imd attended the lectures were a deen d"k+ 0 f prat'Tudp fo Mr Bu- s. Th"'y had been given a new appreciation of the works in th" ; r own Bp-"-h‘n nailery, and an ind -ht : -+o v la '~oV for In m.mv of I’m v - V s it contained. ' r ~ i..- f bis ciil+nro and knowledge. and it was a great ruty rh-r a - d not heard In's lectures. Ho had his andi-nec* very mn+'”-iallv to look onwards in tV realms of art. Dr E. N. Marrina-ton recorded tha motion, which was carried.