H.—23

16

Mr. J. C. Eichmond exhibits a view of Shelly Beach, Auckland, agreeably transparent in colour and pearly in atmosphere ; and in a capital panoramic picture of Blind Bay he has treated a difficult subject with conspicuous success. The composition conveys an impressive sense of distance, and the warm lucid atmosphere, and the far-off mountain ridges with their stainless coronals of snow, are capitally rendered. Both these artists seem to have found a disciple in Miss Jenny Wimperis, of Dunediu, who exhibits three large landscapes, strong in colour, vigorous in drawing, and patient in workmanship -not free from defects, but containing much good performance while disclosing high promise. Her best qualities are most obviously displayed, we think, iv the picture entitled " Across the March." A certain masculine strength is perceptible also in some parts of Miss .Rosa Budden's " Creek at Devil's Gully," but her " Group of Boses" appears to us to indicate a special talent for flowerpainting worthy of being assiduously cultivated ; and this impression is confirmed when we come to examine the nature of the work in her " Group of Sunflowers." Mr. G. D. Barraud has chosen for his subjects many of the remarkable freaks of nature in the country of the hot lakes, and shows us, among other things, what used to be called the Blue Lake as it appeared before the eruption of Tarawera; a general view of the terrace and of that volcano, and the lower basin of the White Terrace at Eotomahana. Among the grander objects upon which he has exercised his pencil are Mount Pembroke from Harrison's Cove, Milford Sound, and Mount Cook from the mountains overlooking the Tasmari. Mr. A. W. Walsh's " Evenings iv the Otago Peninsula," and Mr. F. Wright's three landscapes, are noticeable for the boldness of their brushwork, while there is no little promise in the drawings of Miss Minna and Kora Gardner, and in the study of a head by Miss Kate Sperrey. Oil-paintings. The oil-paintings do not, as a rule, reach the same high standard as the water-colour drawings. Some of them —as, for example, Mr. James Peelle's "Bush Track, Hokitika," hirs "Afterglow," " Birch Forest," " West Coast Eoad," and " Otira Gorge " —denote a nice sense of the picturesque, combined with an earnest effort to represent what he sees and feels in nature, but some of his methods of expression betray imperfectness and inexperience, and there is so much good in the first of these pictures, and in his Mahinapoua Eiver, that, as it appeai-s to us, he only wants putting on the right road in order to make his mark as a landscape-painter racy of the soil. If Mr. Sherriff should have an opportunity of studying Schenak's "Anguish " in our National Gallery, we think it would enable him to perceive, and, perhaps, to correct, the more obvious defects in his "Victim of the Keas." Mr. J. Gibbs's " Oyster-dredging " strikes us as the best piece of work in this collection of oilpaintings, and Mr. A. H. Gear's "Fellow of Infinite .Test" is the figure-picture which seems to attract most attention, while the same compliment is paid to Mr. L. J. Steele's " Story of a Saddle " among the genre compositions, representing, as it does, a dying bushman disclosing a sensational incident in his career to an astonished companion, seated by the side of a stretcher in a bush-hut. Of the four landscapes by Mr. T. L. Drummond, " The Shores of the Mauukau " strikes us as being the most artistic ; while the best passages iv the " Bain-clouds on the Huiiua Eanges," and in the " Beach, Waiwera," are the skies, which in each are freely and skilfully handled. Among the pictures by MissG. Kate Sperrey the "Italian Goatherd" is the one which contains indications of the greatest promise, and the touch is masculine in its strength. The face of the boy in " Leaving Home " is also good ; sufficiently good, indeed, to almost atone for the bad drawing and feeble execution of the rest of the picture. Mr. J. Douglas Moultray contributes three large, boldly-executed, and well-thought-out views of the Sounds on the west coast of New Zealand—all of which have found an appreciative purchaser—and three smaller landscapes. Mr. B. W. Peyton's "Bush Scene on the Upper Wangauui" conveys a good idea of the vegetation of that region, while Mr. G. Sberriff s panoramic view of " The Land of the Moa," from the head of Lake W 7akatipu, takes in a great variety of imposing objects and embraces a wide extent of country. On looking through the catalogues we observe that there are 158 oil-paintings and 140 watercolour drawings exhibited in the New Zealand Court, and that the exhibitors are about fifty in number, showing that there is a strong disposition to cultivate the pictorial art in that colony, as also much artistic ability, although some of it finds very crude ami unskilful expression at present for want of sound and systematic technical instruction. But when this is forthcoming we are disposed to think a distinctive and worthy school of landscape-painting will arise in the " Britain of the South." No country can present a more splendid variety of subjects for the artist to exercise his pencil upon. Photography. There is no other colony in Australasia so well adapted for giving a good show of landscapephotography as New Zealand; for, in addition to its many quiet beauties inland, and its unsurpassable views as seen in its sounds and lakes, it has another in its mountain (glaciers) scenery and wild volcanic region. It has been compared to Switzerland by some and even preferred by others, but it has not yet become vulgarised, as has the former country ; and, whether from its inaccessibility or other causes, certain it is that photographers have not yet taken all the advantage they could do to make the public familiar with this wonderland. Entering this court from the Grand Avenue of Nations, the visitor sees first one of the photographs of trees in the kauri-forest, and, as a sample of kauri-pine is close at hand, it is an easy matter to understand the long, straight trunk of the tree ; these growing sometimes over 100 ft. high before branching out.