PAINTING OF CANBERRA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19247, 12 February 1937, Page 4

PAINTING OF CANBERRA

GIFT TO DOMINION FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The Trade Commissioner for Australia, Mr. E. 11. Nesbitt, yesterday presented to the board of trustees of the National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum an oil painting of the Federal .capital, Canberra, the gift of the Commonwealth Government. In the absence of the chairman of the board, the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, the deputy-chairman, Mr.. T. C. A. Hislop, accepted the gift. In making the presentation, Mr. Nesbitt said that, last year 'he had mentioned to his Government the approaching completion of the National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum and had suggested that, as a gesture of friendship and kinship in view of the fact that. Australian and New Zealand troops were closely allied at a crucial time in the Empire's history, the Government might consider presenting the gallery with a picture typical of Australia. In September last, Mr. Savage, as head of the New Zealand Government and on behalf of its people, received the offer of such a picture, and replied that the trustees would be only too pleased to .accept it. As a further gesture of friendship, the Australian Government decided that the painting should be executed bv a New Zealand artist then residen n Sydney, Mr. Robert Johnson, who was born in Aucklanu and received his early artistic education in that city.

The subject of the picture was hi area of the capital of the Common wealth. He used the word "area' advisedly as the full area of Canberr: city was 100 square miles.