AUCKLAND SCHOOL OF ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 6973, 24 March 1884, Page 6

AUCKLAND SCHOOL OF ART.

; Ox Saturday at noon medals were given by | Dr. Campbell, the fonnder, to the successful students. There was a large attendance of students, principally ladies. Dr. Campbell delivered the following address to the school :—Students of the Free School of Art, —Four years have now run their course since the inauguration of the Free School of Art, and it is very pleasing for me to see here so many familiar facea I recognise aa having been before me when I had the pleasure of addressing you on the closing of the first year of this class, it is a gratifying proof of the persevering industry with which you have followed up your art studies. I think, without any vain boasting, we may congratulate ourselves that we have securely placed our foot on the first steps that will lead us to the establishing art in our midst. We baited somewhat on the threakold, but now that we have crossed it, and have fairly entered the portal, we are greeted with encouraging signs which lead ns to hope that we have surmounted our first difficulties. From small beginnings often are achieved gseat ends, and already our young community shews great vitality, for we have now two Art Societies, which promise to do mach good work. And the prospect that in the future the aspiring artist will find in this our city this means of culture is most encouraging. For the examples of private liberality which reared thia building have been worthily imitated, and within its walls have been collected rich treasures, munificent gifts frim Mr. Russell and Mr. Mackelvie ; and we nave the prospect that, through the Costley bequest, there Bhall be erected an Art Gallery worthy to receive the precious stores now accumulating here. We have reason to be proud that all this good work had been, and is about to be, accomplished through the en* lightened liberality of private individuals, uuaided by the State ; but none the less were we in the North entitled to have been put on the same footing as our more fortunate Southern fellow-colonists, who obtained funds trom the public purse to rear and endow their art institution*. As regards this Free School of Art, it is, I assure you, most gratifying to me that the predictions of its short life, and that " it was only going to be a novelty for a day," have received at your hands so practical a contradiction within the walls of this class room, aud that the liberty of free entrance and free instruction has been so gratefully appreciated by so man; aspiring votaries to art; also, it is a proof and a testimony to your instructor, that his labours have not been in vain. I think I am warranted in saying that the good seed has been sown in prolific soil, and that time will ripen to us a fair yield of artist fruit, of which we shall be hereafter proud. Bat we can have no sudden development of the artistic, or of any other faculty, and it must be matured by persevering study through long years, backed by great patience, great industry, and a constant discipline of the hand aa well as of the eye. It is only a surpassing genius who can leap almost at one bound to great feats of manual dexterity, but the artißt world at large can only look on in wondering admiration, and in vain regrets, the heavenly inspiration has been denied to them. Here we labour under great disadvantages. In old countries, there are so many with both time and money at their disposal, and with every facility and opportunity for instruction; so to them the pursuit of art is comparatively an easy task. But to us, burdened as we are with the labours of every day life which we must overtake, artistic pursuits can only be followed under great difficulties. We fain would have "Excelsior " as our motto and be able to act up to it. Given but the leisure and the means, 'then we, in this bright land of ours, are blessed with climatio surroundings which can create, foster, and lead to highest perfection the artist. For there are surroundings which are fatal to artistic development, or, if not positively fatal, at all events are of a nature which almost forbids its ever fructifying to man's enjoyment. Art is the child of plenty, of refinement, of leisure, of bright skies and beautiful nature ; she cannot be born oat of penary and rags, hard toil, coarseness, and an ever lowering atmosphere. Where was her high altar ? On the bright plain upon which Mount Hymettus looked down, gladdened by the sunlit sky and the flower turfed carpet. Here, we have a second Athens ; for what sky more beautiful, what landscapes more lovely, where colouring more gorgeous ? True, we boast not yet of temples, nor of sculptured marbles, nor of an athen%um, but we are as yet hardly not out of our swaddling clothes, and who shall say, when we are as old as the Grecians were when Phidias made his chisel breathe life into his marbles, whicli have lived even unto oar day, that this isthmus may not vie with the Greeks of those days, and the Italians of later days. We have to pass through a long apprenticeship, no doubt. We must, so to speak, be to the manner born, before we can innately appreciate art. The education towards the love of the beautiful, and following in its wake, refinement and elevation of character, are the objects we have in view and the result we desire to attain, and thongh some may smile at what to them appears a puny attempt, fear not but that we are on the right path and that we shall gather strength as we journey along. There iB no wearying or lagging by the way to the artist once imbued with the right and true spirit. The love which is inspired is an ever increasing love, and " grows more hungry by what it teeds upon," until at last it is assimilated into the very inward being, and becomes part and parcel of our very nature. Some writers go very far in this direction of hereditary development. Listen to what Ruskin says :— "Landscape can only be enjoyed by cultivated persons; and it is only by music, literature, and painting that cultivation can be given. Also, the faculties which are thus received are hereditary; so that the child of an educated race has an innate interest for beauty derived from arts practised a hundred years before its birth. Now further note this, one of the earliest things in human nature. In the children of noble race, trained by surrounding art, and at the same time in the practice of great deeds, there is an intense delight in the landscape of their country as memorial, a sense not taught them, not teachable to any others, but, in them, innate ; and the seal and reward of persistence in great national life ; the obedience and the peace of ages having extended gradually the glory of the revered ancestors, also to ancestral land, antil the Motherhood of the dnst, the mystery of the Demeter, from whose bosom we came and to whose bosom we return, surrounds and inspire* everywhere the local awe of field and fountain, the aacredness of landmark that none may remove, and of wave that none may pollute ; while records of prond days and of dear persons make every rock monumental with ghostly inscription, and every path lovely with noble desolation. Now, however checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive love of landscape in ns has this deep root, which in our minds I will pray you to disencumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and to strive to feel with all the strength of your youth that a nation is only worthy of the soil and the scenes that it has inherited, when, by all its acts and arts, it is making them more lovely for its children." Such are Raskin's words, and no doubt this is the great work we have to accomplish—to educate the preaent and coming generations by the works of art we shall bequeath. So educate them that, iu due course of time. New Zesland's children shall be born with this innate love of the beautiful, and the capability to perceive it. For this capability of perception is really so tar from being the rule that it is, on the contrary, the rare exception. The educated eye reaps great treasures, all lost to others. The treasures lie spread out before thein, but they see them not. Nature appeals to them in vain. Now, I shall illustrate the truth of this to yon, for you will hardly believe me when I tell yeu that to many, nay to most people, when our harbour is most gorgeous in its colouring, it is only a blank sheet of water, not a many-coloured painting of most exquisite hues. There once hung on these walls " a study" from the hand of one who had been educated in the best continental schools of painting. It was a view of this harbour. 1 took a friend to look at it, and his first exclamation was, " But who ever saw such colours as these ?" " Have you never?" I asked. ".No, I certainly never did," was the reply. Fortunately the day was just such another day as that on which the view had been taken ; one of those bright sunlit days with brightest sky and floating clouds which make the waters of our harbour " a thing of beauty." '• Come with me to the gallery window," I said, "and be convinced ?" There, stretching away before us was the entrancing landscape of the Waitemata, with her headlands and promontories, islands near and distant, and intervening waters, and over these were colours the most brilliant — shades of ' most exquisite delicacy. " Eye* you

have, and have never seen thia before; hu Nature in rain asked you to worship her, unfolding to you her most wondroas beauties, and failed to inspire the love of them ?" It was but too true ; he had never before realised what he now looked upon, never realised the depth of beauty in all the variegated details aa he now gazed upon them, and returning to the picture, he confessed he now had " seen such colours as these, " and that the artist had only truth' fully mirrored the landscape on his canvaa. And thus a strange anomaly is brought before us, that we require tbe artist's aid to teach us to see Nature as she is every day revealed to us, for how often when the artist so teaches, do we in our ignorance condemn, unable to discriminate or criticise, and the melancholy confession is forced from ns that We are so little imbued with the innate perception of the beautiful as revealed to us by Nature that we require the artist's cunning to teach us those lessons which we ought to have learnt from .Nature's inspiration. Hence the diotnm and the truth of it, as laid down in the quotation I gave you from Ruskin. And now with regard to ourselves, I may recall to yoa the language I used when first inaugurating this Free School of Art, so that its intended scope may not be misconstrued. The object for whicn it was established has been realised, namely, " to meet the requirements of those desirous of prosecuting art studies until a regular school of design shall have been called into exiitmca." The epoch here shadowed forth will before long Dave arrived, for the Free Public Library and Art Gallery will soon be in existence, and within its walls the School of Art will find a fitting and permanent abiding place with oompetent masters in various brauches, which could not be compassed within the limited space, and with the limited appliances of this room. And in the Art Gallery will be appropriately housed the acoumalacing treasures, for which these walls can no longer give space. I have to congratulate you that under your praiseworthy instructor you have made so great an advancement in the use of your pencil, and he has been rewarded by the ardour and perseverance with which yon responded to his teachings. The manner in which the time prize study was competed for, and the studies executed, gives great promise for the future. But to you, students, it will b« a long and arduous journey before you dare place yourselves in front of the centuries old painting of Guido Reni, now banging before you, to essay a copy, and you must first have the privilege of studying in oil under a properly endowed school, which can command tbe services of experienced professors. When that day comes I hope yon will remember kindly the modest efforts which first guided you along tbe path of art in this Free School of Art classroom. The founder of the school then delivered the medals to the following students : Miss Helen Stewart, 2nd class, " study from the bust," silver medal; Miss Caroline E. Lush, " copy from the flat," silver medal; Miss a! Dobson, "competition prize "—also, "subject from the flat," silver medal; George Gilmore, Ist class, " copy from the statue," silver medal.

These silver medals were very elegant and artistic examples of design silver work and die-sinking. The obverse side presents a view of fiugitoto and the North Head, the view being surrounded with tall fern trees, the water* of the harbour showing well in the foreground. They are the work of Mr. Teutenberg, and are not only creditable to himself as a worker, but even to the city in which SQch work can be produced.