ART EXHIBITION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20880, 23 May 1931, Page 11

ART EXHIBITION.

SOME NOTABLE PICTURES. THE GRUNER LANDSCAPE. TWO FINE PORTRAITS. Visitors to this year's exhibition of the Auckland Society of Arts find much to interest them in the landscape, "Waimnngu," by the well-known Australian painter, Elioth Gruner. This work strikes an entirely new note and helps to show that there are things in New Zealand scenery that local artists have not dreamed of. The picture, with its sober browns and blues, makes little appeal to the hurried passer-by, but like good music it, improves greatly on acquaintance. The same scene, looking across the hot lake to the old geyser crater and Mount Tarawera beyond, has been photographed often enough, but Gruner has given it a quite new significance. The pumice cliffs and the various dull tints of the vegetation on the hills are rendered with the greatest subtlety. Though cloudless, the sky is really atmospheric- and not merely a flat expanse of blue paint, as such skies j usually are in the work of lesser people. The full subtlety of the composition, | leading the eye by devious tracks from j foreground to background, can only be j appreciated after study for some time. : Undoubtedly this picture is one of the j most notable New Zealand landscapes yet | j painted. Still, it is to be hoped that re- j I sident artists, though they take to heart . I his underlying principles, will not try to adopt Gruner's technique. It is individual and in other hands would probably give very depressing results. Mr. Nicholl's Portrait. The five European pictures exhibited by John Weeks may at first disappoint | those, who come in search of the merely | pretty. They contain no luscious blues j and the predominant hues are browns, j warm greys and greens, with touches of scarlet. Mr. Weeks likes large masses and fills his canvas with them in a mas- ; terly way. Bridges and barges on the' scene provide very satisfying bulky I objects and his treatment- of water is | something in tho nature of an object- ! lesson. ; In the field of portraiture, Archibald F. Nicholl's picture of an elderly man, ■ over the title, "Debatable Policy," rightly [ takes a first place. Though a portrait, I this work has evidently not been commissioned, as it is priced in the catalogue. I The spectacled sitter looks up from a newspaper spread on his knees, as if a word would induce him to break into speech. In every way the picturo is an admirable piece of work. The hands aro admirably done and are as full of character as the face. Feminine interest centres in "Mrs. Kenneth MacCormick," by Doris Zinkeisen, who paid New Zealand a visit not long ago. This is a high-spirited study of an attractive sitter It is possible to cavil at the satin background, which offers rather little contrast with the flesh tones, ! and, like the brilliant flowers on a ; Spanish shawl, is inclined to take charge of tho picture. Some Local Artists. Two other large portrait studies are by jE. M. Collier —an old Irish peasant woman and a Maori wahine. In these the blurred treatment of the faces leaves jheir modelling very uncertain .and raises a doubt whether this particulai effect is intentional or not. Ida H. Carey, the Hamilton painter, has broken away from her usual method in a half-length portrait of a lady -against an open-air background and in a small study of a girl in ballet dress. She is represented by a number of other works in the stylo to which exhibition visitors are accustomed. Some might wish that this artist would adopt rather clearer flesh-tones, as she has in part broken away from the use of over-dark backgrounds. Ivy M. Copeland shows a good head of a girl and a larger portrait, also of a youthful feminine subject, In the latter the colour scheme is rather gay and trivial for the size of the picture, which is to that extent less successful than the smaller work. An able small picturo of a girl sketching, by Ivy G. Fife, and a water-colour of a girl with a wide hat under bright sunlight, by Russell Clark, deserve special mention, because much more work of this kind ought to appear in the annual exhibitions. Eve Poison's large study of two nude female figures on a beach under a pohutukawa tree is typical of this artist's vigorous work and gives bright hopes for her future. Small, Good Landscapes. Visitors to New Zealand have sometimes expressed surprise at finding so largo a body of artists trying sincerely to interpret on canvas or paper what pleases them most in the scenery of the Dominion. The exhibition shows clearly that workers in this field grow steadily in numbers and that they are finding new aspects and methods of treatment. Most of the innovations are to be found in the smaller works, such as aro within the compass of amateurs and others with limited time at their disposal. It is to be regretted that as yet not many potential buyers realise how much can be had for the few guineas at which most of them nro priced. Good examples of really meritorious small oil landscapes are three by Andrew Reid, a Christchurch artist. These show n very distinctive use of colour, which makes them little poems in paint. An Auckland artist who has gained strength in recent years is Ida G. Eise. This ladv shows half a dozen oils of widely different subjects. "Cloud Shadows," a little piece of , hill scenery, captures the atmos phere of a fine day very satisfactorily. European Scones. A bluish haze pervades all of several small landscapes by John Cam. Duncan, but if this convention is accepted they will be found very pleasant little pic turos, especially thoso in which wide stretches of tree-dotted country aro de picted. Among tlie moro experimental pnintois is Marcus King, of Wellington. His. "Autumn Landscape, Silvcrstreani," is a rather fanciful impression of yellow pop lars against a shadowed purple hill. "Noonday Calm" depicts a beach, with waves in horizontal lines of different colours arranged like tho bands of tho spectrum and two children in the fore ground The purpose in each case seetm 10 be an attractive design rather than an exact rendering of nature.