MYSTERY PICTURE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 982, 22 April 1911, Page 4

MYSTERY PICTURE.

Some of the critics are amused just at present by a “ mystery” picture at the Dore Gallery, says a London cablegram of February 24. About one-half of the paintings presented of late by PostImpressionists and others to an unenlightened world are ” mystery ” pictures in a sense, but this one is quite a thing apart. A figure of Christ stands on a rock in the wilderness, and, truth to tell, there is nothing outside the conventional about the painting when it is viewed in the light. When darkness descends, however, the picture still remains visible. The figure of Christ shows darkly, but the sky and all else is luminous, and the effect is added to by a large cross which is not revealed by the picture in the light. It has been explained to critics, and to those of the public who have wandered into the Dore Gallery, that this cross was not painted in the picture originally — that somehow it ‘‘came there.” Is it a mystery, or is it just a trick with luminous paint ? That is a question which the transatlantic painter, one Henri Ault, a FreuchCanadiau, is probably the only one to answer, and he says that the whole startling effect ‘‘justcame.”