A PREMIER'S PORTRAIT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21327, 31 October 1932, Page 11

A PREMIER'S PORTRAIT

MR. JOHN BALLANCE

OFFER TO GOVERNMENT

FINE PAINTING FOR SALE

[BY TELEGRAPH —SPECIAL REPORTER] WELLINGTON, Saturday A fine portrait in oils of Mr. John Ballance, Premier of New Zealand from 1891 until his death on April 27, 1893, has been submitted for sale to the Government and now stands in the Prime Minister's room at Parliament Buildings for inspection by members of (he Cabinet. The portrait is by P. Tennyson Cole, an eminent English painter, who numbered among his subjects such distinguished men as King Edward, Lord Milner, Cecil Rhodes and Joseph Chamberlain. Shortly after the portrait was painted the likeness so impressed Mr. R. J. Seddon, who succeeded Mr. Ballance to the Premiership, that he purchased it for his privato collection and it has now been offered by Mr. Setidon's relatives to the Government for permanent hanging in Parliament Buildings. The painting of the portrait is briefly described by Mr. Tennyson Cole in a book of reminiscences, "Vanity Varnished," which he published in London only last year. "I had not been long in New Zealand when I was privileged to paint the Countess of Glasgow and her daughter, now Countess of Cranbrook, and the late Premiers John Ballance and Dick Seddon," writes Mr. Cole. "Premier Ballance succumbed to an operation shortly after I painted him, but to those frivolous friends who declared that ho died from the shock of seeing my finished portrait of him I was able to prove that the regrettable death of this distinguished sitter was so sudden that he never saw the finished result of the sittings. "When later his devoted friend, Mr. Seddon, who succeeded him as Premier, saw the portrait, nothing would satisfy him but that he should possess it and at once he commissioned mo to paint his own portrait." The Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes, considers the portrait a very fine work. "But unfortunately." he said, "the Government has no money to buy it."