KEY POINTS:
It's attractive, charming, varied, skilful, valued at millions, free to see - and it's ours. It's Passion and Politics at Auckland Art Gallery.
This week, while dozens of overseas artists invade the city in Turbulence, the third Auckland Triennial led by the Auckland Art Gallery, it also has on show on the first floor a previous invasion from overseas, a splendid reminder of the treasure that already exists in the gallery's permanent collection of British art from the 18th and 19th centuries.
These paintings were bought and donated to give art status to the city and many have become popular favourites and part of our traditions.
One of the finest and most typical works in the show is by Sir John Millais, former president of the Royal Academy. It was painted in 1892, the year that Vincent van Gogh died in obscurity. The Dutch painter had begun Modern Art by means of charged brush-strokes that conveyed passion. Millais, once a revolutionary Pre-Raphaelite, but by the 1890s a smooth academician meeting the public demand for sentiment and a good story, is the polished height of a Victorian tradition.
He creates in Blow, Blow, thou Winter Wind a landscape of compelling power. He paints a bleak path, snow driven by the wind, a bone-chilling scene done with enormous skill and observation.
But that's not enough. As a 19th-century British painter he has to tell a story too. So in the foreground is a forlorn woman with a baby under her shawl. In the background a man leans against the wind, clutching his hat. In the middle is a dog howling, uncertain whether to go with the man or stay with the woman. As the viewer, you make up your own story as to how, why and when.
Very Victorian, although the costumes are Regency, is the charming painting by Marcus Stone called Her First Love Letter, where the recipient of the billet doux sits in a sunlit garden with her fan, footstool, sewing box, her hat with its pretty ribbon, her cat, and her friend, in a garden dappled with sunlight. It is painting for a social elite, but it is an insight into the attitudes and admirations of the British past. The exhibition is given more bite by pictures from the 18th century. The introduction to the show is William Hogarth's series of engravings called The Harlot's Progress, which deal with the rise, downfall, and imprisonment of a young girl from the country who has turned to prostitution. It includes such racy details as the pillory and whipping-post in prison and the sex toys on the harlot's bedroom wall.
The most turbulent thing in the show is a frowning angry bust, by Henry Fehr, of Gladstone, Victoria's great Prime Minister whose hobby was rescuing harlots. But he came later.
The politics of the early 19th century is referenced by such curiosities as a death mask of Napoleon and a curiously unflattering miniature of the great general. Nothing about his conqueror Wellington, but then his victory is commemorated in every second street in central Auckland.
Mostly, though, it is calmness, poetry, sweetness and light. Millais is again represented by a portrait of a fashionable woman, immensely clever in its use of black for hat, gloves and sash. His predecessor as president of the academy, Frederic Leighton, later Lord Leighton, is represented by a magnificent high-minded painting called The Spirit of the Summit, where an opulent figure representing higher thought sits, in a clinging gown, on a rock in the alps. The painting was presented by Moss Davis, who was obviously an admirer of a fine figure and thinly veiled nipples.
Tucked away in the 18th-century part of the show is a painting of the founding president of the academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds. It is an honest portrayal of his face disfigured by a lip smashed in a carriage accident.
All the old favourites are there. The big picture of a child's funeral in Cornwall by Frank Bramley has ragged children looking on. There is a little red-headed girl among them whose face is a stunning piece of painting. More so perhaps than the brooding Cleopatra clad in a tigerskin and a big pearl earring by Laurence Alma-Tadema, almost outshone by its Egyptian-style frame.
There is also the charming, flag-raising work by James Tissot which was stolen, damaged and restored. Alongside is the same artist's etching of a companion in fashionable Victorian dress, all folds and fur and brilliantly rendered.
This accumulation of the gallery's treasures is notable for the frequent inspiration of poetry. One of the most famous artists here is J. W. Waterhouse. He depicts a knight in armour, with a dewy-eyed maiden - a snake transformed into the femme fatale who will destroy him. The story is from Keats. Equally inspired, but not as well painted, is the work alongside which illustrates the ballad of the doomed Sir Patrick Spens and the ladies awaiting his return.
No doubt the triennial exhibitions will be more democratic and open our eyes to contemporary themes but it is good to be reminded of what we, on the edge of the world, have inherited from great traditions of the past.
