ART IN NEW ZEALAND

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 2, Issue 8, 1 February 1924, Page 16

ART IN NEW ZEALAND

Written for “The Mirror” by J. CHAPMAN'TAYLOR

J N a large and well appointed bookshop in Queen Street, Auckland, there lies a two-guinea book reduced to the price of one guinea and still languishing for want of a purchaser. In its pages you will find nothing but what is lovely and of good report. It is entitled “The Art of Hans Heysen,” published by “Art in Australia.” No customs officials or censors will ever feel concern as to its free passage in or out of any place It breathes the spirit of the country, pure and undefiled by morbid imaginings or the hectic life of cities. Turning over the pages of this book I felt myself initiated into the inner being of a great country. Here was Australia; her glowing air, the burning heat of her summer sun, her steely blue sky so pitiless and far off. Never before had 1 so realised the nobility and grandeur of great gum trees, their beauty of colour and form, their virile life.

Each page brings a new vision of lovely odour and consummate craftsmanship in watercolour painting. There is nothing bizarre or strained, nothing violent in colour or technique. It would seem that Hoysen passed through all the dangers of an artist’s training, and kept unsullied his child-honesty of mind and vision. He built up his perceptions, but never learned tricks. Obviously his pictures are painted with a humble brush, and it would seem that the “faithful three”—cobalt, Venetian red and yellow ochreare almost all he needs of pigments. His effects are not exceptional are typical, and therefore great. Everyone can see exceptional effects, but to see what is truly typical of a country or place requires more than ordinary vision. Hey sen shows us the great burning soul of Australia. True, others have helped to pave the way. Streeton is great, Hihler has contributed something that no other man ever can or will do in the same way, so that Dorothea Mackellar’s “opal-hearted country” is not, and, of course, could not be pictured by one man alone. It is enough that with the birth of her national consciousness, there has been bom in Australia a line and independent national art of painting. Ao-te-a-roa, the Long White Cloud, our country, less poetically named New Zealand, remains an enigma to us. We do not know her colour oilier character. Who will rise up and show us these? So far no one has done this in any way successfully. Our artists have either been trained in foreign mannerisms, developed under other skies before (bey came here, and have been unable to throw these off, or they have not reached the inner secrets of New Zealand landscape. One of our men, with several pictures in the last Auckland Exhibition, seems to see New Zealand through a perpetual London fog. He has learnt a trick, and sold himself to a vain fancy. New Zealand has crystal clear air, cool and well washed. It is typical of her forms that they can be seen with stereoscopic clearness as through a binocular. This is one of the hiy things about New Zealand. Again, another of our artists, possibly enchanted with Australian work, paints our earth and sky and air and trees promiscuously with light red, not quite literally, of course. There may be times when this colouring is true, but it is not typical. Surely our skies are pure and softly blue, our atmosphere a cool grey, while only our earth has the warm colours. What wonders lie in store of which none of us have dreamed? What golden glory is there in the kowhai tree, or what stately shape in the pohutukawa, even apart from its bloom, which is the obvious thing? But I do not think it is in trees that our artists will find the really big in New Zealand, for we have no tree so representative as the gum in Australia. To me, the big facts of our landscape are in beautiful cloud forms, cool, fresh skies, warm earth, and around all a crystal clear, but no less tangible atmosphere. Now, I would that these ideas were painted rather than written in ink, but for the present let the humbler medium suffice if possibly it may bear fruit.