AN ARTIST ABROAD

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 145, 15 March 1939, Page 7

AN ARTIST ABROAD

Mr. Linley Richardson Returns JVONDERS OF OLD DUTCH SCHOOL “I visited most of the art schools and galleries in Loudon, naturally, in order to freshen up, as it were, and really had a very delightful and I hope profitable time,” said Mr. H. Linley Richardson, artist and teacher of art at the Palmerston North Technical School, who arrived at Wellington by the Strathallan on Monday. Mr. Richardson, who was formerly a teacher of art at the Wellington Technical College, is an artist whose work is known all over New Zealand as well as in Britain. He has been on a year’s leave of absence, and elected to put it in taking a kind of refresher course in Europe. After his round of the art schools iu London, Mr. Richardson said be was convinced that the pursuit of art was not dying out in Britain. There were still many young people who wished to express themselves in terms of paint on canvas, and he was pleased to say that they were not all advanced modernists, though a great deal of the new art was being produced. Whether it found purchasers was another thing. It was difficult perhaps for people to bring themselves to purchase something neither they nor others could understand.

Mr. Richardson was particularly impressed with the progress which had been made in the method of arranging art shows and museum exhibits since his last visit to Britain. Whereever possible they adhered to the single line of pictures, arranged at eye-level, so that they were easy to look at. But, of course, at some shows and galleries that could not be done, as there were so many pictures to hang in a limited space. What struck him most in London was the change effected in the arrangement of exhibits in the museums. He referred particularly to the natural history section of the South Kensington Museum, where the animals, birds, and reptiles were always displayed as though in their natural surroundings. That was an enormous advance on the old way of showing them in huge glass cases with no background at all. From a glance at the exhibits as now arranged one could visualize the character of the country natural to the animals or birds being shown. Exhibits so arranged must, he thought, be an incentive to the study of natural history among the young people. Famous Dutch School. Mr. Richardson made his bow to the famous Dutch school when he visited Holland, and spoke glowingly on the wonders of the famous Rijks Museum, where one could revel in the wonders of Vermeer (in particular), Franz Hals. Rembrandt, and other notables of this school. It was in this museum where Rembrandt’s famous “Night Watch", hung, a painting which . was given a Special spot-light to itself. But the whole museum, he added, was a rich treasury of art and was worth a visit to the Continent for itself alone. Another storehouse of artistic treasures which fascinated Mr. Richard, son was the Franz Hals Museum in Haarlem, where the paintings of Hal could be seen in all their glory. The building itself was a picture, a Quaint old seventeenth century structure, with old-fashioned semi-opaque latticed windows, and in the centre of the building an open courtyard, alive with the flowers of the season. “One does not approach the Franz Hals Museum in the ordinary way by an open door,” said Mr. Richardson. “One has to use an antique knocker, and then wait for the door to be opened by an aged janitor, to whom you entrust the reason of your visit. Having informed this person that you wish to inspect the painting of Hals, he admits you—not before. The paintings of Hals have a special room to themselves, where they are arranged in chronological order, so that, if sufficiently interested, one may trace the artistic progression of the artist through life, right up to the time when he becomes an inmate of an old man’s home, a period in which he painted a remarkable group of the women governesses, or whatever they called them, who controlled the affair's of the home, showing that Hals retained his cunning up to the last.”