A HEROIC ARTIST

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2929, 15 November 1916, Page 9

A HEROIC ARTIST

HERBERT T. BABBACE, OP .AVANGANDI, KILLED. AVanganui lias, somehow or other, attractions for the artist. Perhaps it is that the district embodies a big range of scenery, mountain, bush, pastoral, and seashore, and. not forgetting New Zealand's most picturesque river. Among the artists of note who have resided in AVanganui was the late Herbert T. Babbage, an .Englishman who knew how to put paint on canvas so as to produce perfect pictures. He was a strong painter, a conservative colourist, and a good draughtsman, and paintings by Babbage are paintings that grow in one's esteem with the passage of time— periiaps tho best of all evidence of real artistic merit. .Mr. Babbago enlisted at Home, and was killed in l'landers. Bofore ho went to the front ho sent out to the Wanganui Patriotic Association a spiendid painting entitled "Sunlight on tho Soa," a fine, strong bit of dappled sea, well painted, with a flotilla of small boats in the ofßng. Tho value of this painting is £100—probably more now seeing that its creator (who had had pictures hung at the Paris Salon and Royal Academy) is no more. It is to bo disposed of in some manner calculated to yield tho best return to the .Patrioti.Q Association's junds.