MISS MARGARETIHARTLEY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2545, 24 December 1902, Page 16 (Supplement)

MISS MARGARETIHARTLEY.

This young lady is a good example of a rising New Zealand artist, having been born at West Harbour, neai Dunedin. With art, as with literature, we cannot be said as yet to have developed " a school," but that will no doubt come later; and in the meantime it behoves us, as good colonials,, to encourage the efforts of those young persons of both sexes who desire to pursue the arduous and poorly remunerated profession of painting, and to give them all the help and appreciation possible, Almost . from her childhood Miss Hartley ■loved Nature, and passionately longed to be a " real artist," and in the home of her father— one of our earliest settlers — this passion found food in the picturesque scenery of the island-dotted harbour and its rugged shores, as well as in the swiftly changing effects of light and shade incident to the central position of her home. When little more than a child, Margaret Hartley entered as a student in the Dunedin School of Art, where she worked under Mr Hutton until the longed-for opportunity occurred, which opened the way to the Art School of South Kensington Here the dream of the girl became a reality, and the young New Zealander passed through her art novitiate with credit. She then returned to Dunedin, and for a time did well as a teacher of drawing and painting, and also as an exhibitor in local art exhibitions. Then followed a painful illness, with threatened blindness, which appeared likely to put an end to her art career, and quench the ambition which burned strongly though unobtrusively in her heart. Now, however, the illness and its attendant troubles are removed, and we shall no doubt hear more of Miss Hartley and her work in the near future. Her strong point is portraiture, and in the examples we offer to our readers it will be seen that she has attained much success in that difficult btanch of art.