ART IN NEW SOUTH WALES

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1585, 15 April 1887, Page 3

ART IN NEW SOUTH WALES

S irao of the best work in New South Wales is that of the two Collingridges —Arthur and George—which is, in porae respect?, the most satisfactory there. If I were to make a gu«ss. I should Bay that Arthur Collingndge had either been for a short time in Paris, or had had some teachingjfrom a recent pupil of the " Boaui-Arts. His faults are the faults of the modern French school, and his virtues, to a great extent, have the same source of inspiration. The " Christmas Bush Gather, era" is an ambitious picture, representing a boatful of figures, principally females, well grouped and harmonised, though slightly too much in the middle of the picture, engaged in gathering the pink blossoms of the Christmas bush. The whole thing is too flat, and lacks atmosphere, but is well drawn and composed, and, but for the want of tone perspective, well coloured. The watercolours of George Collingridge are even better, andl should like to dwell upon two or three of them, but my article has already run beyond the appointed leneth. If I were to add anything it would be to warn the coming artists of a young country against two faults already hinted at—carelessness in any form, especially such carelessness as accompanies an intentional sacrifice of accuracy to so-called effect; and the alternative failing of over-concentious-negs and slavish fidelity to detail. Breadth of conception, accompanied by a truth of form which is instinctive rather than laboured, is perhaps an ideal which cannot bo easily reached. But to recognise its truth is to have set one foot at least on the right road. —Arthur Grey, in The Magazine of Art.