“WORLD'S WORST”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 5 November 1930, Page 4

“WORLD'S WORST”

PICTURES FOR AUCKLAND GALLERY ~... _ /V'THE EDINBURGH PURCHASE 10$ ■ (By Telegraph-Special to “The Mail”! AUCKLAND, 4th November. The Auckland “Star” received a letter dated Edinburgh, Ist October, from Mr F. McCracken, commenting on the recent purchase in Edinburgh of pictures for the Auckland Art Gallery. Mr McCracken was a student at the Elam School of Art. His pictures are hung in the Auckland Art Gallery. For some years he has been studying in Edin- : burgh. Mr McCracken says: “A brilliant member of the Royal Scottish Academy when dining with us asked if we had seen the purchase at the Scot- . tish ■'Academy for the Mackelvie collection in Auckland, twenty-eight pictures in all and the world’s worst. Curious to see-the ‘world’s worst’ I went the next day, and I felt personally outraged that Aucklanders should he made a laughing stock of the knowledgeable f; artists of Edinburgh, who wonder,'as well they may, what manner of people we are to have a third-rate collection foisted on to us. There is not an outstanding work amongst the lot. _ Of the 28 pictures almost all are uninspired mediocrities painted in ‘the manner of ..A the worst Victorian period—ani bad examples at that. One or two are-quit© pleasing, in particular a very small picture by an associate of the Academy, and a water colour figure study by a • woman. From the catalogue prices over £•1000 has been disbursed on the 28 ‘world’s worst,’ and even if the prices were reduced to exactly half the amount (it is known that such .painters frequently and gladly do reduce)... £SOO would have been thrown away—£soo which might have been spent on a really great work of art worthy of a notable gallery. But quantity rather than quality was evidently a desideratum. The __ collection purchased at the Edinburgh exhibition and presumably now on its way to New Zealand will not enhance the reputation of the Auckland Gallery made famous, so competent art critics tell us, by the finest examples of the Glasgow school to he found anywhere in the world.” t