AN ART DISCOVERY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20104, 24 March 1928, Page 7

AN ART DISCOVERY

VALUABLE PAINTINGS Mosl Important Blake Find of This Century WORKS HIDDEN FOR YEARS L iai " Chronicle ” Service j AUCKLAND, March 23. Two sisters living quietly together in a little house in Ellerslie found recently in a neglected corner of their sitting room a set of water colour paintings which have proved to bo che work of the laialous English poet and painter, William Blake. These pictures are worth from £12,000 to £15,000 and their discovery is the must important Blake find of this century. Other pictures in the house arc worth about £5OOO.

The Blake pictures are an original set of famous illustrations to the Booh of Job, which is the finest work done by him in either of the arts in which he excelled. It is the crowning work of a genius and in it may be scon thoso qualities which have brought Blake his tardy lame. There is extraordinary imaginative vigour, glorious mastery of line and marvellous venturesomeness in the use of colour. Blake bXogrupners liavu known of the existence oi this set, for their painting was unc of the lew tasks for which uie artist received hclpiul pay. I’hcy have frequently teen written about in England but no English eyes have seen tnern for almost dU years. (Since 1851 they have been, in Auckland. Their present possessors are Airs E. J. Hicksun and her sister Aliss Martin, daughters of the late Air Albin Alartin, an English, artist, who arrived in Auckland in 1851. Mr Martin, who was born in 1813, was associated with Blake as a child, and in 1834 he became a pupil of the famous English landscape painter, John Linnell. Aliss Alartin has yet another Blak< picture in her possession, it is named “The Wise and Foolish Virgins,” and in Gilchrist’s life of Blake it is described as “a very noble work.”

The picture, “The Departure of Lot,” which was discovered in the Public Library last year, was probably also in the possession of Miss Martin at one time.

Miss Martin has also in her possession four portraits by Linnell, twto being studies of her father, and the other two of other members of the Martin family. There is also an oil portrait of the famous early nineteenth satirist “Peter Pindar,” by the artist, John Opic.

In that little home in Arthur {Street arc pictures which must be worth £20,000. Auckland has its link with William Blake but it is almost sure to bo broken. The illustrations to the Book of Job will be sought by connoisseurs in England and America, but Auckland has the minor thrill of knowing that an art discovery of majoi importance has been made in the city.