Art Notes

Publication: Melbourne Herald

We have been favored with a private
view of the picture exhibition to be
opened at the Federal Gallery shortly.
The pictures generally are hardly up
to the standard of past years.

"Sweet Stuff," a Queensland land-
scape by W. M. Hughes, lacks the
vigorous treatment of this artist's
earlier canvases. He attempts a senti-
mental treatment and a pernickity
technique with which he is quite un-
familiar.

"The Deserted Woolshed," a mono-
tone by Arthur Blakeley, is a gloomy
atrocity that should never have been
hung on the line. The treatment is
jejune, and the accented high-lights
are startlingly crude. Besides, the
whole thing is out of drawing.

In "The Axeman," Massy Greene has
chosen a rather gruesome subject.
The lurid clouds in the background
seem to need explaining; though the
drawing of the axe in the foreground
is singularly realistic. This artist has
done more pleasant work in the past.

"A Pastoral," by Earle Page, is weak
in treatment, and the artist seems to
try to make up for what he lacks in
artistic sense by a use of bright colors
that serve merely to attract the un-
initiated.

The other canvases are uninteresting,
and the promised large picture in oils,
"The Re-gathering of the Clan," by W.
A. Watt, is missing from the exhibi-
tion.