AM AND ARTISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2623, 22 June 1904, Page 68

AM AND ARTISTS.

— Some years a.go a fund v>&i raided to present a portrait of Gladstone to bans, j'-i ihe hall at C'hii'.t Chuicli, Oxford. Gladstone bnt to Mr Watts, but tbc picture, after boin<? exhibited, was l.ot liked, and Dr Liddcll took it back to the painter, with a \icn io pltciation*. Mr "Watts painted out tho f.ice, and asked for another sit tins?-. This coi Id not be oi ranged, c o die ailJ-t r-ciurncd the ivonoy which he had rocched. The.i Sir Willuni Ridnnond tii-d hi=! hand, hut "Pun^ir' dccnbcd th-s a, tho .-mtra-.u cf "lit GV loae after swecpiiT- in.-, own cii'muey. Viiiu a soota'ule' c.\pi-L^,(in."' Sir William, in turn, handd'over hn fee and withdrew. Then 3.Ji'lbis painted un" bur it vas no sooner finished than Lord Rosebery snapped it up, and Glad tone vowed he would sit no moio. Out, of comxilimpnt to Lord Ro-ebcry, houe\cr, and to enable him to keep his purchase-, lie did sit asain, and the poiuait

winch now bangs in the hall at Chrisfi Church is the result of the. fourth attempt to g\:t him. for itself. — In. tho Mappin Ari Gallery, hx tha pretty Weston Park, Sheffield, is housed! the "collection, of modern paintings bequeathed by tho late Mr John Newton, Mappin, and generously supplemented by Sir Frederick T. Mappin, M.P. You find! fciero an array of paintings of remarkable •\aiue and interest. I do not know where: ■else you will sog rsuch fine Linnclls or Muillers, Pettics or Oreswicks. Thomas Cres--wick, E.A., was a Sheffield man, and received his fir«t training in the town. He moved to London, and lived! the life- of a successful landscape painter in Lindcm Grove, Bayswater; but he constantly resorted to th© north country for his subjects.Ruskjn describes his work as that of "ai mnn who has sought earnestly for truth." Be -was an outdoor man, loving- to painfc tho sky uncW the sky. Oddly enoug-h, the collection contains no work by Godfrey Sykcs, a Sheffield artist of distinction, to Whom a monumental pillar has been erected' outside the- building. Sykes was Master of tho Sheffield School of Art, and was called to London in 1859 to carry out, the decorations of the South Kensington Museum. He« died in 1866.— "John o' London,"' in T.P.'a Weekly.