RAYMOND McINTYRE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 371, 2 August 1946, Page 16

RAYMOND McINTYRE

An Appreciation by Roland Hiphkins

HE recent exhibition in Wellington of Raymond MclIntyre’s work was a rare event for those who were fortunate enough to experience its charm and distinction. To pass from the pavement into the little McGregor Wright gallery was to find oneself in a different world. In such an environment, eloquent of a@ period so near in time and yet so re-

mote from present day thought and reactions, one could imagine that Oscar Wilde might drop in, perhaps to find Whistler protesting that this Antipodean painter had dared to sign some of his portraits with a cipher resembling his own precious butterfly; or it might have been Will Rothenstein, inveigled in by Charles Conder to share the lyrical loveliness of the McIntyre portraits, but instead murmuring something about lack of objective reality, and that, anyhow, the Japanese tradition belonged to Jimmie Whistler. Benedetto Croce’s saying, "the belief that a picture yields only visual impressions is a curious illusion," helps to explain why the presence of about thirty paintings and drawings should so completely transport one to a past age. Perhaps, also, it was because this exhibition was unheralded that it was a unique experience for us to discover, in the aftermath of this second world war, an art that possessed and intrigued one by qualities of reticence and elegance. Though McIntyre reflected the spirit of an earlier period than that in which he lived, his work shows no evidence of the sentimentality or the descriptive naturalism of Victorianism. He was too sensitive an artist to identify himself with the popular art of his time. (continued on next page)

{continued from previous page) For biographical details I fall. back on the notes supplied by A.M. and W.S.W. on the exhibition folder, . Raymond McIntyre was born in Christchurch in 1879, a son of the late George McIntyre, and studied at the Canterbury College School of Art. He left for England in 1909 and worked as an artist there until his death in 1933, European Influences The exhibition, which one cannot assume contains the full range or the artist’s best work, indicates that he was neither a symbolist nor a swift annotator of things seen-as one London critic described him--~but an artist of considerable accomplishment and refinement with genuine aesthetic insight and sensibility. Though one is conscious of the influence of some of the more vital aspects of European painting, that bring to mind the names of Monet, Pissarro and Matisse, there is a quality through‘out MclIntyre’s art that seems to be unique, and lives in its own right as a tesult of his own personal vision. This seems to me to be particularly true of his portraits, which possess charm and dignity, and a calm spirituality: During the last 24 years of his life, he rarely, if ever, publicly exhibited his paintings in New Zealand, although a few have found their way into private collections and a_ self-portrait was bought a few years ago for the National Gallery in Wellington. A group of seven paintings, purchased from this exhibition by the Academy of Fine Arts and the National Art Gallery, are at present on view in the D.L.C. Gallery in Wellington, Two paintings and one portrait drawing were also purchased by the Auckland Art Gallery and should soon be available for exhibition there.