THE FINE ARTS IN AUSTRALIA. [From the "Household Works," March 13, 1852.]

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 672, 22 September 1852, Page 3

THE FINE ARTS IN AUSTRALIA. [From the " Household Works," March 13, 1852.]

There is a picture now lodged at the Amateur Gallery, 121, Pall Mall, which, apart from its own merits, is rendered interesting by being the first large picture ever painted, or (by many people) ever scon in Australia. It is an illustration of the Scripture, "Suffer little children to come unto me. The painter is Mr. Marshall Claxton. It was produced under the following circumstances. In the summer of the year lf!50, a munificent lady residing in London, and distinguished every-

where for her gentle generosity and goodness, commissioned Mr. Claxton te paint this picture for the interior decoration of an Infant School. Mr. Chixton was then on the eve of emigrating to Sydney. If he might only consider the subject on the voyage, lie said, and paint it in tho land of his adoption, what a pride he would have in showing it to his new countrymen, and what a testimony it would be to them that he was not slighted in 'Old England ! The commission was ficely entrusted to him to he so dealt with ; and away he bailed, light of heart and strong of purpose. flow he studied it, and sketched it, month after month, during the long voyage ; and how he found it a companion in whom there was always something new to he discovered, and of whom he never tired ; needs not to he told. But when he came to Sydney, he could find no house suited to his requirements, with a room large enough to paint the picture in. So he asked the Committee of the Sydney College for the loan of that building; and, it being handsomely conceded, went to work there. It may be (questioned whether any Australian models had ever sat before, to painting man. At all events, models or not models, the general population of Sydney became so excited about this picture, and were so eager to see it in every stage of its progress, that seven thousand persons, first and last, dropped in to look at it. And such an object was as new to many of them, as the travelling elephant was to the young men on the banks of the Mississippi, when he made a pilgrimage "a while ago," with his caravan, to those far-off regions. Thus the Picture was imagined, painted, and sent home. Thus, it is r at the present writing, j lodged in Pall Mall — the dawn perhaps of the longest day for the fine arts, as for all the arts of life, that ever rose upon the world. As the bright eyes of the childi'en in the Infant School will often, in these times, rest upon it with the awe and wonder of its having come so far over the deep sea; so, perhaps, Mr. Macaulay's traveller, standing, in a distant age, upon the ruins of an old cathedral once called St. Paul's, in the midst of a desert once called London, will look about him with similar emotions for any broken stones that m.ay possibly be traces of the School, said in the Australian nursery -legend to have contained the first important picture painted in that ancient country.