FRENCH ACADEMY OF ART EXHIBITION.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIII, Issue XIX, 4 November 1899, Page 832

FRENCH ACADEMY OF ART EXHIBITION.

The exhibition of pictures by Messrs C. F. Goldie and J. L. J. Steele at the French Academy of Art, Auckland, derives its chief interest from the magnificent painting of “The Arrival of the Alaoris rn New Zealand,” the joint work of the two artists mentioned. The subject is one that must have occurred to the minds of New Zealand artists on many occasions, but the obvious difficulties of carrying it into execution doubtless prevented anyone attempting it till now. There are many way s in which such a subject might be treated, but we certainly think Messrs Steele and Goldie have chosen the most effective in presenting the starving voyagers from far Hawaiki at the moment when, hopeless and desperate, they catch a glimpse of land through a break in the storm. The canvas, which is a very large one, is full of suggestion. The lowering sky and dark weary waste of waters over which the weather-battered - canoe is making its way conveys the idea of utter loneliness, and brings into splendid relief the glint of sunshine which illuminating one corner of the picture shows to the exhausted watchers in the canoe the first, faint indication of land. But it is on the barque itself and those in it that the attention dwells first and last. There is a terrible attraction in these naked emaciated figures huddled in all different postures of agony and despair in the canoe. The artists have made a special study of each of the twenty members of the crew who are visible—a study of wonderful minuteness. The fact that the bodies are, as Maoris would be under the circumstances, almost naked has afforded the fullest opportunity of the painters to delineate the expression not merely of the face but of the entire frame, and they have made the very most of that opportunity. Famine and despair are writ large all over those scarecrows of human beings. Their ribs may be counted, showing through the thin covering of flesh, their limbs are those of skeletons, and there is a world of terrible meaning in the contortions of their bodies. Tte picture is certainly most gruesome. Its very’ artistic merit makes it so. Were it less appalling it would be less true, less a triumph for the artists. It is a picture that must command attention. We shall probably have more to say about it in detail when we come to review the principal pictures at the exhibition of the Society of Arts next week, where it will be on view. Among the other large pictures in the Academy “The Explorer's Last Message,” one of Air Steele's happiest efforts. Finely drawn, and magnificent in its colour, it is a subject full of interest. Air Goldie has one large canvas of Christ as a child teaching in the Synagogue. and a very large number of smaller works that display his talent as a portrait painter.