NEW BRITISH COUNCIL EXHIBITION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 475, 30 July 1948, Page 7

NEW BRITISH COUNCIL EXHIBITION

Wakefield Collection of Contemporary British Art

N 1945 New Zealanders saw an overseas exhibition of Children’s Art which was brought here by the British Council, and in 1947 their Rural Handicrafts display toured the country. During the next few months we will be able to see another British Council sponsored art exhibition, the Wakefield Collection of contemporary British watercolours prints, and drawings. It will arrive here next month from Australia, and will be shown in the main cities and provincial centres, starting at the Wellington National Art Gallery on Tuesday. August 17. The collection contains 223 separate exhibits, consisting of 68 watercolours and drawings, and 155 etchings, engravings, wood-engravings, lithographs, and colour prints. The tour has beer arranged by the National Art Gallery in conjunction with John Bostock, the local representative of the British Council. Noteworthy works in the watercolour section are Roger Fry’s Verona, Frances Hodgkins’ Fish, Paul Nash’s Stone Cliff and John Piper’s Christchurch, Newgate Street. Generally speaking exhibits in this part of the collection cover the artistic activity of the best part of a century, varying from the work of such veterans as H. B. Brabazon and Philip Wilson Steer to that of younger artists like Robert Darwin and Raymond T. Cowern. The choice of works from the older artists, however, was restricted to

those whose work formed the inspiration of later schools. The drawings also cover a wide field, including pencil sketches for «sculpture

and original studies for paintings, as well as drawings which have been made purely for their’ own sake. Walter Richard Sickert, Sir Muirhead Bone,

and Augustus john are the veterans in this part of the exhibition, and although not all British artists are represented, the exhibitors hope that the drawings. selected will give some idea of fhe variety of modern draughtsmanship, __ techniques and the high standard achieved in this field by contemporary British artists. ‘The collection of 155 prints may well be the outstanding part of the exhibition, in the opinion of Stewart Maclenan, Director of the National Art Gallery. The selectors have been able to obtain some very fine examples, and their generous choice was influenced by the fact that in the graphic arts the British tradition has always been a strong one. In aquatint and mezzotint the English were pioneers, so much so that _ their monopoly of the mezzotint @rocess led to its

being calied in tne 18th Century Ja maniére anglaise. In recent years there has been a greater realisation that line engraving, far from being a mere aid to book-illus-tration, is in its own right a craft of great beauty and power. There is as a result a large number of examples of this type of print in ‘the exhibition, as well as many woodcuts and wood engravings, including works by John Nash, Robert Gibbings, and Eric Gill. Particularly interesting are the many colour prints, which should form oie of the most attractive features of ‘the collection. The Wakefield Collection originated from a gift of £3,000 made to the British Council by the late Lord Wakefield, and the task of selecting and buying the exhibits was entrusted to Camp‘bell Dodgson, former keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. For .the last nine years he has visited exhibitors, dealers, and _ studios. in Britain in a constant search for new works. The most difficult part of his work he found to be the acquiring of watercolours, the best examples of which are naturally harder to get hold of than prints. However, the use of his indies ence and great enthusiasm for the arts has resulted in a_ collection which comes near to the British Coun-. cil’s ideal of representing every watercolourist and draughtsman of importance in Britain to-day with something which | is on a level with his best work,