PICTURES FOR THE ART GALLERY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21430, 3 September 1931, Page 15

PICTURES FOR THE ART GALLERY

THREE FRESH ACQUISITIONS Those who have been following with interest the very marked progress of pur civic Art Gallery since the removal to Logan Park will be pleased to learn that after a considerable amount of negotiation the Art Gallery Trustees have been fortunate in acquiring through their selectors in London three highlyimportant works, purchased by means of the income from the Peter Smeaton Request and the Robert Hay legacy. One is a portrait in Bodyguard uniform of Charles Gerard, first Earl of ♦Macclesfield, by William Dobson; another, very attractive portrait by Ambrose M'Evoy, and the third, a landscape entitled “Chepstow Castle,” from the brush of P. Wilson Steer.

Dobson, who was a pupil and follower of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, and Court Painter to Charles I, was born in 1610, and died in 1046. He attended the King at Oxford, where he painted his portrait, and those of the Prince of Wales, Prince Rupert, and other members of the Royal Family. His portraits are lifelike and well executed, resembling those of Van Dyck. Examples are preserved at Coombe Abbey, Bridgewater House, Devonshire House, the National Portrait Gallery, and at Hampton Court (where is the excellent portrait of himself and his wife).

Ambrose M'Evoy, who died in 1926 at the zenith of his powers was, as a boy, encouraged by Whistler to take up the study of art. He devoted himself chiefly to portraiture, and his work was characterised by breadth, freedom, and tenderness of tone. He was one of three young men whose genius was recognised at an early age. Sir Joseph Duveen, in his book entitled “ Thirty Years of British Art ” (London, 1930), writing of the NeW English Art Club in 1899, and of Augustus John, William Orpen and Ambrose hfEvoy, says:— “The last-named was another brilliant young man who began exhibiting at the New English Art Club about the same time, though the first picture of his that I remember vividly was his dramatic and exquisitely-handled small painting entitled “The Thunderstorm,” shown at the club in the autumn of 1901.”

Duveen then goes on to stress the point that the exhibit in the New English Art Club of that year compared more than favourably with the works shown at the Royal Academy by the leading artists of the day, such as Benjamin Constant, Abbey, James Sant, Frederick Goodall, Alma Tadema, Herkomer, Cadogan Cowper, and J. S. Sargeant. P. Wilson Steer is another of the New English Art Club group, and probably one of the leading English landscape painters of the day. He is represented in the National Gallery, Millbank, but no fewer than eight works, and is referred to as having “ achieved a very personal impressionism both in landscape and portrait interiors, emphasising the vibration and movement in atmosphere.” His picture entitled “ The Quarry,” exhibited in the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition Gallery of 1925-26, will be remembered by many, The arrival of > these paintings should add greatly to the attractiveness and educational value of the Public Gallery.