BRITISH ART IN DUNEDIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22259, 11 May 1934, Page 15

BRITISH ART IN DUNEDIN

;i3, THE LOAN COLLECTION IN THE s- PIONEER HALL. 7. ly i. A^ter vou have made your way through 4 ' ne gallery on several occasions, and r. dorjo what you can to make yourself , familiar with the general characteristics ~ of each picture, you discover that there are certain frames, the contents of which , catch your attention again and again. ' You go away, but find yourself wander- , ing back to them. You survey them from all sorts of angles, and, in short, regard them as your own special favourites. • Thus, when you visit the gallery in » company with some other enthusiast, you ie are to be pardoned if you continually » say to her, " But have you seen this, and ; " this, nnd this?" dragging her around l - after you while you go into ecstasies over 5 the particular few that you regard as n' your own. a There is "The Turban," bv Lucien g Pissarro, at the end of the fret wall, r It_ is an arrangement of weak colours '■• laid against weak colours, but forming i- a pattern in which the eye delights again n and again. The head and the turban h. outlined against the pale wall are pecu- » liarly satisfying, and produce an ml. stantaneous feeling of pleasure. In the next room is "Near Cookhara," by Stanley Spencer, a canvas composed of a horizontal planes of colour broken in . the foreground by two heavy diagonal B lines, and full of a brilliant, though „ stormy, light; and, just past it, "A Venetian Window," by Vanessa Bell, so care- - lessly executed, so lightly painted, but full of sunlight and morning, with its I brick wall broken by windows the curved ' tops of which echo the curve of the • flower bowl in the window, the hard • lines of the window sill cutting across " the foreground, and the deliciously naivo '■ arrangement of flowers. The corner of the same wall is responsible for two of I the finest pieces of still life in the col--1 lection. " Flowerpiece." by Matthew 3 Smith, and "Still Life," by Duncan " Grant. The first is a pattern of bold 3 male colours—violent peacock blue and 3 gold against a mauve wall, with the brown chair intermingling its colours between them, and the greens and reds of ' the vase and flowers—a concentrated 1 mass of energy, extremely arresting. The | second is the very opposite—space and ' freedom and coolness, the effect of the ■ green shade on the dun wall, with the ] curved white jug beneath and the bright : yellow tulips and apricots, being unusu- ' ally charming. On the next wall is the much-discussed 1 " Picnic," by Ethel Walker. And here i you find, if you do not stand right up against it, that in its informal fashion it gives ail almost perfect effect of serenity, sunshine, and early day. Further- ■ on there is Sir William Orpen's "An Irish Girl," that lovely pastel thing where the sweep of the hair, the curved line i of chin and shoulder, and the unobstrusiveness of it all seem to make, it the sweetest exhibit in the place. There is also Ethelbert White's " Essex Barns," heavy, solid, everlasting in its darkbrownish colours, and yet, as the sweep of the grass, the bend of the trees, and the flight of the birds show, full of the motion of sun and light and wind. . "The Entombment," by Tom Nash, is the last to hold you in that room. And there you notice that everything is in a downward movement, the steps at the sides, the "rhythmic extension of the men's arms, the folds of the robes, everything down, down, until the hand of the entombed man itself is reached, still pointing downwards. Back in the big room there are two etchings. "Oh, have you seen ?" Yon hurry across to show them —R. S. Austin's "Woman Milking a Goat" and " Woman Praying," the simplest, most clear-cut, peaceful things, and yet, how full of meaning! The Brockhursts must have attention all to themselves; they are all so remarkable. But there are still more pictures to 6ee. They are " Envermeu in Snow," by Sylvia Gosse —an arrangement of outlines rising from left to right ever upwards, and painted so as "to give an effect of that brilliant half-light that comes with snow; " Flowers in a Vase," by J. B. Manson, where exciting splashes of vermilion show above the neutral green of a vase, the whole standing on a square of cloth which, in its subdued tints, is a shadow of the brightness above it; " Interior," by H. Gilman, a queer arrangement of red lines against a mauve and puce background, with a curiously sustained sense of form; " Provencal Landscape," by Richard Wyndham. where the pattern is a series of uplifted curves culminating in the hill at the back, and where everything has fan-like lines following the same upward trend; and " Paysage," by Charles _ Gunner —a chessboard landscape effectively carried out in blue-greens and mauve. There are still others you could talk about. But you remember that other people have favourites, too, and like to show them just as much as you do. Valiantly, therefore, you change your role and cease to be a demonstrator.