ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND THE STATUE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10479, 26 June 1897, Page 3

ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND THE STATUE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib,—A letter bearing Rev. Wm. Beatty's signature is always welcome, and that appearing in your issue of 23rd inst. is no exception, being, in fact, the only one of the many dealing with the Queen's statue that approaches the subject upon the broad basis of the value of art as a national educator. Mr Beatty's strictures on the hideous wooden box and tin lid style of architecture that positively blasts the natural beauty of Auckland are but too well deserved. In a country where timber is the staple building material no visitor can fail to be struck with the absence of any attempt to treat that material in the successful manner iu which it is handled by the Swiss and Norwegians, and by some Canadian and American architects, l'or the stereotyped monotony of the colourless flat and wholly uninteresting Portland cement street architecture no more, or less, can be said than for the domestic nightmares.

Are the people of Auckland as apethetic to all art as their dwellings and placet of business might lead one to suppose? The paucity of the sales of paintings at the annual exhibition of the local Society of Arts affords but little encouragement for enquiry in that direction, but, on the other hand, music appears to have no lack of lovers, which is encouraging, as the educated ear is not more sensitive than the cultivated eye, and sound is not more capable of horrid discords than is either form or colour; be the reason what it may, this fact is here quite unrecognised. It is most earnestly to be hoped that those who may be entrusted with the selection of our Diamond Jubilee statue will be guided not by the consideration as'to whether it may be purchased for 7Jd or Is per lb (see published reports of late meetings in support of the statue), but as to whether the memorial is a work of art worthy of the occasion of its being. To quote the talented editor of a valued art magazine, what is needed is a portraiture of Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, and ruler of eoiiutriea in the uttermost parts of the earth; not so much a more or less faithful presentment of a venerable and dignified lady as a design which shall typify empire, while yet it retains some likeness of the one who wields the sceptre. This is the principle upon which Mr. Alfred Gilbert worked when he provided the fine seated statue of Her Majesty, done in bronze and enthroned among all the attributes of power, and which is now to be seen at the County Hall of Winchester. He grasped the idea that a statue of Victoria was to be not merely that of a personage but should typify the might, the majesty, the grandeur of England, whose earth-shaking possibilities are centred, according to the Constitutional theory, in her ruler. There was never in the history of the world so fine an opportunity for a sculptor, who is also a designer. The subject is one that compels the imagination, and to be merely literal is to fail.

A wall-considered selection will give Auckland one lasting object of interest, an illjudged choice will simply add one more standing reproach to the public taste.—l am, etc., R. Mackay Fbipp. 320, Victoria Arcade, Auckland, June 25.