ENLIGHTENING.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1217, 28 August 1911, Page 4

ENLIGHTENING.

< I GETTING PICTURES "ITUJIG" MEANS NOTHING. "Getting in the Academy or Saloil means nothing," Eaid Mr. Rupert Bunny; tho successful Melbourne artist, in an interview, the other day. "There is sp.endid work refused at both places.; I realised the absurdity of the present method when I acted as one of the jurors appointed to select 'lie paintings for tho Autumn Salon last year. Think of devoting four solid davs 'to the scrutiny of about 300(1 pictures! Tho most sincere mau loses judgment under these circumstances, and selecting becomes a capricc. "At the Old Salon," 110 continued, "a painting that was refused, 0110 year, was hung 011 the line the ;icxt. It's luck—just like, bridge; tho fate of pictures, like cards, depends 011 how they ro placed together. If one comes alter something specially good, it stands a good clianco of being passed out; if, on the other hand, it is shown after a lot of indifferent canvases, it is probably accepted. "It is strange how taste charges. About 1895, a picture exhibited by Bcsnard wa.s looked upon as an atrocity—people laughed at it. Yet at tho Paris Exhibition, 1900, tho eame canvas was hung among the most remarkable paintings of the previous decade. Parisians are admiring pictures to-day which tliey wouldn't have looked at twenty years ago."