MR. BARKER'S PICTURE.
"Your charge against Mr Barker, the artist here," said the magistrate, "is assault and battery, I believe ?"
"Yes, sir." " And your name is " " Potts! lam art critic of the Weekly
Spy." " State your case. •'I called at Mr Barker's studio upon his invitation to see his great picture, just finished, of ' George Washington cutting down the cherry-tree with his hatchet.' Mr Barker was expecting to sell it to Congress for fifty thousand dollars. He asked me. what 1 thought of it, and after I had peinted out his mistake in making the handle of the hatchet twice as thick as the tree and in turning the head of the hatchet around, so that George was cutting the tree down with the hammer end, I asked him why he foreshortened George's leg so as to make it look as if his left foot was upon the mountain on the other Bide of the river , "
" Did Mr Barker take it kindly ?" asked tbe justice. " Well, he looked a little glum, that's all; and then -when I asked him why he put a guinea pig with horns, he said it was not a guinea pig, but a cow, and that it was not in the tree, but in the background. Then T said that if I had been painting George Washington I should not have given him the complexion of a salmon-brick ; I should not have given him two thumbe on each hand, and I should have tried not to slew bis right eye around so that he could see around the back of his head to his left ear. And Barker said, 'Oh,, wouldn't you?' Sarcastic, your honor. And I said, 'No, I wouldn't; and I Svouidn't have painted oak leaves on a cherry-tree, and I wouldn't have left the spectator in doubt as to whether the figure off by the woods was a factory chimney, or a steamboat, or George Washington's father taking a smoke.'"
" Which was it ?" asked the magistrate.
•'I don't know. Nobody will ever know. So Barker asked mo what I'd advise him to do, and I lold him I thought his best.chance was to abandon the Washington idea and to fix tho thing tip , so as to represent the ' Buy who stood on the, Bnrn'ing Deck.' • I told him he might paint the grass red to represent the flames and daub over the tree so's it would look like the mast, and piill George's foot to. this side of the river bo's it would, rest somewhere on the burning deck, and maybe he might reconstruct that factory chimney, or whatever it was, and make it the captain, while he could arrange the guinea pig,to do for the captain's dog." « Did he agree ?" \ "He said the idea didn't, strike him. So then I suggested that he might turn it into' Columbus discovering America. , Let George stand for Columbus, and the tre'6 be turned into a.native, and the hatchet made to answer for a flag, while the mountain in the - back-ground would answer for the rolling billows of the ocean. Ec said he'd be hanged if it should. So I mentioned that it might, perhaps, pass for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. Put George in black for the headsmarj. bend over the tree and put a frock on it for Mary, let the hatchet stand, and work in the guinea pig and the factory chimney as mourners. But Barker said there would be somebody worse hurt than Mary, Queen of Scots, if I kept on."
" Didn't like it, hey." " 1 s'pose not. And I said that while I did nbt want to force my advice upon him, I would say, if my opinion was asked, that the best hope of that picture would be to make it a representation of the Deluge. Build in an arkaround George, and put a shirt on him, and call him Noah ; crowd in other animals with the guinea pig, let the factory chiiriney do for Mount Ararat, and the tree for the store pipe projecting from the roof of the ark, Just as I had got the words out of my mouth Barker knocked me clean through the picture. My head tore out Washington's near leg and my right foot carried away about four miles of the river. We had it Over and over on the floor for awhile, and finally Barker whipped. lam going to take the law of him in the interests of justice and high art." So Barker was bound over, and Mr Potts went down to the office of the Spy to write, his criticism.
Max Adeler
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AMBPA18791028.2.18
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Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 342, 28 October 1879, Page 3
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773MR. BARKER'S PICTURE. Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 342, 28 October 1879, Page 3
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