"ART IS NEVER EASY"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 823, 6 May 1955, Page 5

"ART IS NEVER EASY"

Sir,--Letters appearing under this heading have been interesting, but the latest suggestion regarding heads on postage stamps savours of pot-hunting, The suggestion that our beloved Queen’s head should’ be superseded by one of Katherine Mansfield is ill-timed and in bad taste. The attempt to influence your readers to an appreciation by New Zealanders of the Misses Hodgkins and Mansfield’s art is not deserving of much thought. Frances Hodgkins was, by her own words, not proud of New Zealanders as connoisseurs of art, but those who remember Miss Hodgkins, as I do in her youth, saw no reason to go into raptures over © her paintings. Contemporary with Miss Hodgkins were artists of very great ability, such as L. W. Wilson, water and oils; O’Keefe, portrait painter in oils; the two Moultrays, father and son, the elder noted for the remarkable detail of his paintings; Robert F. Smith, a fine watercolour artist, and many others. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to have visited the great art galleries of London, Paris, Holland, etc., know the difference between genius and mediocrity. After 30 years’ experience as a bookseller I have yet to learn why Miss Mansfield is being so highly written up. Her writings were never in demand, and from what I know of them I think we should agree with the English critic who invited New Zealanders to drop Miss Mansfield and get on with the. living. One cannot help but regret that the Government agreed to the spending of £600 on a biography of ote whose claim to fame is obscure. One of the greatest monuments is to do something for the living. ; ;

PILL BOX

(Gisborne).