PAINTING.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1899, 6 November 1913, Page 3

PAINTING.

MR. BAILLIE'S COLLECTION. PICTURES WORTH ,£60,000. Mr. John Bailiie, tlio well-known art connoisseur, who arrived in Sydney last week, is bringing a collection of pictures, wlioas vahio lies somewhere between ,£'50,000 and ,£OO,OOO, to bo shown at the Auckland Exhibition, New Zealand. The 'Auckland Exhibition. The authorities ill charge of tho Exhibition have arranged for a special gallery for the pictures, consisting of one main building and four annexes. "I only wish," ho said .regretfully to a Sydney 'interviewer, "that tlm 25 per ccnt. duty on pictures wero removed throughout the Commonwealth. Nothing would please mo better than to hold an. exhibition here. However, as I can't come to them, I hope very much that a largo number of people in Australia will ljo coming to the Auckland Exhibition."

Mr. Bailiie, though interested in the work of the Post-Impressionists as distinguished from tho Cubists, Futurists, and other modern schools, has confined his present selection to works by British painters, London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow being, of course, chiefly represented.

"Last year," 'lie said, "I look out to Now Zealand a collcction intended to show what modern painters are really doing. A good many were, I suppose, Tather too much for tho' New Zealand public,, though, curiously enough, it was quito extraordinary how interested many peoplo become in Wellington. So this limo I thought it best to make my collection of a more.popular character. Twenty or thirty pictures aro from this year's Royal. Academy, and a few from tho Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. I may mention," ho added, smilingly, "by way of vindication of my taste, that half a dozen of tho pictures I had my cvo on wore all bought up before I could got hold of them."

■ Speaking of tho Post Impressionists, Mr. Bnillio remarked that ho was, so ho ■believed, tho first person in England to hold a one-man exhibition of Post Impressionistic ivork. Ho exhibited in London a number of pictures "by Mr. Pheltm Gibb, an English disciplo of tha school. "People used to como and roar with' laughter at sorno of thorn," said Mr. Bailtie. "All the same, a groat deal of their work is full of meaning, for mo at least, and it is simply absurd for people to laugh at all of it. You must study these things "carefully. Modern art is no longer merely conventional, as in the last decade. It is no longer intended for tho delectation of mere aesthetic coteries. We livo in an age of motor-cars and aeroplanes. Artists' to-day aro interested in light, life, movement. Wo havo no timo for mere nicali'ng drawings; art must express something. "Of course," added Mr. Bnilhe, "some modern v;ork does make ono laugh. But, after all, why shouldn't ono laugh at a picture?"