MR. L. W. WILSON.

Otago Witness, Issue 2545, 24 December 1902, Page 9 (Supplement)

MR. L. W. WILSON.

This well-known artist gives some general remarks, instead of personal details, concerning his own career, and sends us a charmingly impersonal little sketch, which we feel we cannot do better than give in his own words: — "I am afraid there is little of public interest for a landscape artist to write about, as his role does not often bring him into contact with interesting personalities such as visit the portrait painter. I have always been a devoted follower of art, and received my first rudimentary lesson in drawing on the same day that I was instructed in the due formation of pot-hooks, and what was a hateful drudgery to many of my schoolmates, was to me an unfailing source of delight. lam told that as a tender youth I started as a realist. A lady cousin once dressed for a ball in the room in which I had been put to bed, but I flatly refused all orders to go to sleep, as became a well-disposed child, until supplied with paper and pencil, in order to portray the result of an operation I had watched with absorbed interest. The finished sketch, however, was noticeable for the absence of any sign of a bodice to the dress. Criticism was met by the remark that I ' couldn't see any,' and I sternly refused to make any additions to this work of art on the plea of its absolute truth. Dresses must have been as decollete in the early fifties as in the twentieth century. I well remember the first money I received for an effort from Nature I was staying in Dover during the time of the American War of Secession, and after the sinking of the Alabama by the Kearsage, off Cherbourg, June 19, ISC4, the latter vessel put into the roadstead for repairs. Whilst she was anchored off shore, I made a most careful drawing of her and sent it to a near relative in Yorkshire, and my joy may be imagined when I received a P. 0.0. for a sovereign by return — a joy increased by the knowledge that my patron was himself an expert on steamers. The artist under whom I studied water colour, and to whom I owe everything I know, was N. E. Green, noted for his popular series of ' Handbooks on Landscape 'in all its branches. He had a large clientelle, including royalty, but exhibited little. He married early in life, and, as he once told me, had ' to teach and live, or exhibit and starve.' His technique was admirable, and his advice that of all eminent men — i.e., with the exception of drawing little can be taught; the student can be put on the road, and must then go to Nature and learn as many of her -ecrets as he is capable of assimilating. That is where industry comes in, such as that of Turner, whose 9000 drawings, etc., are catalogued by Ruskin. But, generally, the artist's is a life of bitter disappointment with occasional quasi-successes. I have told many parents that a boy had better be taught to break stones well, than study art as a profession; but if it is in him he will be an artist in spite of all obstacles. To say that there is endless scope for landscape work in New Zealand, is a truism that has been reiterated over and over again; and in no part that I have visited is the scenery more beautiful and varied than in Otago. At the same time nature here is exasperatingly difficult in her most beautiful moods, the intensity of the colour key, if I may so express it, being almost hopelessly undepictable. For instance, the late Mr Ruskin, when sending to a friend of mine a cheque for double the amount agreed upon for some water colours of Canterbury, wrote that he knew ' They must be true to nature, because no one could invent yellow — almost orange — grass against purple mountains.' How true of any view, under certain atmospheric conditions, even from the train, while crossing the Canterbury Plains. Contiasts so startling require the genius of a Turner to redeem them from an exaggeration verging on the grotesque. Apropos of the want of appreciation often exhibited by the public, I relate an anecdote illustrative of the extraordinary remarks made to artists in per-

feet good faith. It was told me by a colonial painter, who has now ' joined the majority. He was a clever artist, and many years ago was commissioned to execute a portrait of a well-known citizen. After its completion my friend, satisfied with the result, placed the picture in a good light and exhibited it to the sitter. After a careful and minute examination and some favourable preliminary remarks, the patron breathed forth : 'Ah ! What on earth is that white spot in Tny eye?' 'That, Sir, is the high light on the pupil.' 'I never had such a thing, or anything of the sort, and my family are all equally sound both in wind and limb.' And in spite of all protestations and arguments to the contrary the offending spot had to be painted out, and the eye left flat as a pancake. So much for the understanding of some would-be critics."