Art.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 15, 10 April 1902, Page 18

Art.

I, sincerely trust King Edward will be considerate enough to allow the Premier an hour or two to himself sometimes. After saying ' kia-ora ' to the Prince of Wales, the most important piece of business Mr. Seddon has to do is to take a run round to the South Kensington Museum, or Guy's Hospital, or wherever it ia that they regulate the art classes, and offer the man in charge an expert poultry plucker's salary to come out here and improve colonial art. To all appearances the Colony contains only four or five subjects' for painting. You see the whole five of them in every house you enter. If the space over the mantelpiece isn't spoilt by a framed conglomerate of small velvet bags, supposed to represent fox-glove, it is occupied by a mirror with that everlasting swan painted on it. I haven't any down on swans, though swans have down on them^fl pelves, but I feel inclined to wring the long neck of that fellow oil the mirror every time I see him. Ia other parts of the room you see panels of poppies and tiger-lilies and arum lilies with a big

spike sticking out of each one like the handle of a new tackAnd then, all around the walls you have the same old tin plates with the same old stork on the same old one leg in the midst of the same old bulrushes. And I have round out that it is considered a capital offence against art to paint all the bulrushes sticking up straight. You must make two or three of them hang over broken. Here and there you may find the picture of a peony, but it is as much like a peony as a peony is like a private income. The art of the period is decadent. It is enough to make a man blow out his brains with a loaded bayonet, and it 'ought to be improved. Mr. Seddon must see to it.