Artists’ Corner

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 429, 10 August 1928, Page 14

Artists’ Corner

MUNICIPALITY OF NICE j HAS PURCHASED WORK j OF SYDNEY THOMPSON, ! FAMOUS N.Z. PAINTER j L i WORK IN CONCARNEAU Sydney L. Thompson, the New Zealand painter, whose visit to his native land in 1922 was the biggest art sensation this country has known for many years, has had one of his colourful Cancarneau fishing studies purchased by the municipality of Nice. The picture is well hung, among “the moderns,” in the centre of a wall and on the line, in the new Jules Cheret Musee. It is here that the cartoons and the illustrations of the famous Frenchman are exhibited in what Mr. Thompson describes as “a very fine building.” AUCKLAND EXAMPLES Auckland possesses two particularly fine Thompsons, both quayside studies in the picturesque Brittany fishing village where he is familiarly known as “The Master.” There are others, fortunately in the leading Dominion galleries, as well as in discerning private collections m this country—the majority were purchased during his last visit to New Zealand. Sydney Thompson is recognised today as one of the most vital influences in contemporary French art. Of late, however, the former Christchurch student has not enjoyed the best of health. “I have done very little painting,” he writes from his Brittany coastal home, “not feeling lit enough. One needs to be very fit to do the work that 1 have been doing in Concarneau.” The fisherfolk whom he painted at work on the quays in the quaint old fishing town, he explained, were never still for more than a minute or two at a time. It took a lot of concentration to “make anything decent of them.” Mr. Thompson mentioned incidentally that Miss Frances Hodgkins, whose work in the last Auckland exhibition attracted so much attention, was painting in Brittany in the autumn. Miss Hodgkins, who originally hailed from Dunedin, recently very successfully exhibited her French sketches as a “one man” show in London. SARDINE FISHING “There is a certain amount of sardine and general fishing going on just now—when the weather permits—but the tunny boats are not yet fitted out for their first cruise. The harbour is now full of them, and the men are hard at work painting the hulls and scraping masts, etc. “Of course, lying up as they are at present, they are not nearly as fine as when they are coming in or going out under full sail, or at anchor with all sails set on a calm evening when the sun is reddened by the thick atmosphere of the town. Then the port of Conearneau is like fairyland.” The painter says that he is not exhibiting much this year, though he has received .the usual invitations to do so from different towns in France. New Zealand art-lovers wish Sydney Thompson all the rewards that success can give him, and, best of all, good health. ERIC RAMSDEN.