THE PAINTER

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 227, 7 September 1933, Page 4

THE PAINTER

THE PUBLIC'S DEBT TO HIM. SYDNEY, Aug. 31. Professor Leslie Wilkinson gave a lecture at the Macquarie Galleries yesterday on the debt which the public owed to painters. One of the painter's most important functions, ho said was to teach people how to look at. objects and landscapes. Being once on a holday trip, he travelled with a painter, and sat beside his companion while he worked. Glancing across at the canvas every now and then ho would be struck by some effect of colour which seemed to be unreal. Yet when bis eye returned to the landscape, he saw that the colour effects wore actually there. He had not become aware of them through his own observation before he saw them reproduced in paint. Many a time at Sydney University he had seen effects of light during an autumn afternoon which would seem hopelessly artificial if they were literally reproduced. People often criticised Sydney adversely; and said that it lacked subjects for painting. But there were countless delightful bits of scenery which any artist ought to bo overjoyed to reproduce. The architecture of Sydney as a whole did not cater for pictorial or artistic effect. In brick buildings, especially, the effect was more proper to a provincial town than to a great capital city. Architects should do their work in such a way as to make the city a paradise for painters, who would stop entranced every few steps at seeing some now grouping to delight their eye. The trouble in Sydney was that no one seemed to become aware of the prospect of an ugly building going up until construction operations had actually begun, and then a protest on aesthetic grounds was too late. This was the case with the regrettable concrete covers that had been placed over the city railway entrances outside the Town Hall. These covers suddenly appeared on the scene; and when a universal chorus of protest was raised, they had to be knocked down again, with further financial expenditure.