ROYAL ACADEMY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22099, 3 May 1935, Page 11

ROYAL ACADEMY

NEW ZEALAND EXHIBITS PORTRAIT BY CAPTAIN BIRLEY LONDON. May 1 The exhibits at the Royal Academy, in addition to a painting by the Auckland artist Mr. Charles Goldio of a drowsy Maori chief in European dress, include ono by another New Zealander, Captain Oswald Birley. This is a presentation portrait of Sir James CrichtonBrowne. Captain Birley was born in Auckland on March 31, 1880. He went to England as a boy and was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He .studied art subsequently at Dresden and Paris. He is a medallist of tiie Paris Salon and a member of the Royal Portrait Society and similar organisations. In 1930, at the exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, he exhibited a portrait of the King. Since that time he has become a portrait painter of note. In 1932 a portrait of Gandhi by Captain Birley was rejected by the council of tho Royal Academy as undesirable for the Academy's summer exhibition. The council declared that the rejection was not actuated by political motives, but was due to the fact that the portrait was the least important of the three offered by Captain Birley for the exhibition. Tho other two were accepted. They were portraits of Lord Irwin (now Viscount Halifax) and Sir Robert Witt.