BRIGHT FUTURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27082, 17 May 1949, Page 9

BRIGHT FUTURE

FORMER DUNEDIN ARTIST EXHIBITION OPENED * An artist of much promise whose best work was still to come was how Dr A. H. McLintock summed up the work of Stewart Maclennan, the Wellington artist, when opening an exhibition of his work in the Lecture Hall of the Public Library yesterday afternoon. The exhibition includes 56 of the artist’s paintings, and will be open until May 27. Although most of the exhibits are water colours, there are also oils, several pen drawings, and some wood engravings. Dr McLintock said that Stewart Maclennan was a Dunedin-born artist who had received his education and some of his training in the city, and was remarkable in that he had gone overseas to study and had returned to New Zealand to work. He Was the director of the National Art Gallery at Wellington, and his success should be an incentive for other New Zealand artists to return to New Zealand after study overseas. All his teachers had been impressed with his draughtsmanship when he had attended art school, and he had learned much from such teachers as R. Enfield, who had shown him the significance of modern art movements, -and from W. H. Allen, from whom he had obtained colour and decorative influences. Maclennan’s work at the Royal College of Art had been outstanding, and his teachers had been eulogistic about his paintings and his application to study. His work was always judged well at the annual competitions that were held. He had attended night classes as well as his study during the day and learned much from J. H. Mason. He maintained that craftsmanship was the basis of all art, and worked on the idea that an artist should realise the possibilities of a subject as well as its limitations. He was a traditionalist, and his work was marked by sincerity. “Jt strikes me that Stewart Maclennan has not yet entirely found himself in the New Zealand environment,” Dr McLintock said, “ but the next few years will be important ones for him. The future promises well for this prominent New Zealander.”