THE EXHIBITION

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVII, Issue 21508, 22 November 1939, Page 8

THE EXHIBITION

Australian Art Valuable Collection A valuable collection of paintings and sculpture by prominent Australian artists is housed in the Australian Government Pavilion at the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition. The Cultural Section is one of the Pavilion’s special features. It contains a complete art gallery of representative' works. The collection is valued at £5OOO. The Art Gallery comprises 52 paintings and eight pieces of sculpture. In addition six original pencil drawings by Mr Hardy Wilson have been loaned by the Australian National Library of Canberra for display on the walls of the Reception Room. These drawings have a dual interest because they repreesent both art and architecture. The National Library holds a collection of sixty pencil drawings, together with a large number of measured line drawings, which were acquired in 1926. The buildings depicted represent the first fifty years of architecture in Australia, having been erected between 1790 and 1840. They therefore express the old colonial architecture which Mr Wilson claims has much in common with the colonial architecture of U.S.A. The outstanding qualities which Mr Hardy Wilson depicts so successfully are the compinations of sunlight and shade which these buildings assume in the Australian atmosphere. In addition to his studies in early colonial architecture, Mr Wilson completed a series of fifty similar pencil drawings of early Grecian and Chinese architecture, also in the possession of the National Library. The publication of these two series of drawings in beautiful lithograph form, together with several other books on creative art, have extended Mr Wilson's reputation far beyond the Commonwealth. The six drawings at the Australian Pavilion are typical specimens of his art. One represents a house in Campbell Street, Hobart, Tasmania, a city particularly rich in well-preserved examples of homes of the early colonists, many of which reveal, a strong influence of the Georgian period of English architecture. Another is of St. James Church, Sydney, built by Governor Macquarie (1810-1821) which is perhaps the outstanding example of the work of the convict architect, Francis Greenway. A third is of “Hersley,” Smithfield, N.S.W., a country home designed by a military officer who settled in that State after serving with the Indian army. He planned his home with the memory of the bungalows of India to guide him. Another depicts doorways in Lower Fort Street, Sydney, representing the type of house much in favour with the wealthier residents of early Sydney. Among the small pieces of sculpture displayed are examples of Rayner Hoff’s work. Rayner Hoff, who designed the King George V memorial to be erected at Parkes Place, Canberra, in front of the Federal Parliament House, died last year before the actual work was commenced. He is among the mast famous of sculptors. Other sculptors represented include Clive Stephan, Orlando Dutton, Ola Cohn, Web Gilbert and Daphne Mayo.

The pictures in the Australian Pavilion Art Gallery are examples of the work of some of the best known artists of the Commonwealth, including Elioth Gruner, bom in New Zealand, but whose main work has been done in Australia. He died during October of this year. Other artists with a wide reputation whose works will be shown are Sir John Longstaff, George Washington Lambert, Sir Arthur Streeton, Daryl Lindsay, Lionel Lindsay and Norman Lindsay, Harold Herbert, Norman Carter, Margaret Preston (noted for her wild flower studies), Will Ashton, Howard Ashton, Max Meldrum, William Dobell (who is olso represented in the Australian Pavilion

by his forty feet mural depicting Australian literature). W. B. Mclnnes (who died early this month), Adrian Feint (represented by mural work also in the Entrance Hall), Hans Heysen and Nora Heysen, Robert Johnson and Will Rowell, John D. Moore, F. H. Coventry, and Syd. Long. In addition, there is a representation of the Australian “moderns” such as George Bell, C. R. Drysdale, and Kenneth Macqueen and Arnold Shore. The whole of the Cultural Section was supervised for the Department of Commerce by Mr Sydney Ure Smith, 0.8. E., himself an artist and etcher of note, who is Vice-President of the Australian Art Academy and President of the Australian Society of Artists.