3IO NEW SOUTH WALES. 



a certain sum)^ tlie patronage of tlie pulolic to any appreciable extent 

 has not yet come. In any case, especially in tliese depressed times, 

 art patrons are few, and when found there is still sometimes the pre- 

 judice which, irrespective of merit, prefers the foreign article to the 

 local, or perhaps refuses the latter at any price. 



But that this prejudice is passing every succeeding art exhibition 

 seems to tell. There can be no question of the increasing public 

 interest in these shows, and doubtless with the coming of better times 

 a better day will dawn also for the artist. One thing may certainly 

 be said — that if he has need, as he assuredly has, for much genuine 

 enthusiasm for his art, there is ample proof that he has it and to 

 spare. Nothing less could have enabled our artists, during the last 

 few years, to accomplish so much excellent work under such unfavour- 

 able conditions. And the conscientiousness of their work is equal to 

 their own courage. It would be easy to give the names of individual 

 local artists who, in their respective lines, have little to fear from com- 

 parison with the best of their old-world compeers, as well as of some who, 

 greatly daring, have challeng-ed and won recognition at high art's very 

 head-quarters. But we prefer to treat them here as a whole, and say 

 simply that no body of harder or honester workers than the artists of 

 New South Wales, reaping less adequate pecuniary return, probably 

 exists anywhere. True, the "potboiler" is not altogether unknown 

 to them, any more than to their literary brethren. But man cannot 

 live by enthusiasm alone, any more than he can by bread, yet some 

 modicum of the latter at least he must have, if only to help him to 

 keep up the other. A visit, however, to the Australian Court, or to 

 any of the exhibitions, furnishes abundant evidence at once of the 

 enthusiasm and conscientiousness of our artists, and of their capacity 

 to catch and transfer to canvas much of the true spirit of a nature as 

 new almost to art as, till but the other day, so to say, art was to her. 

 Here, too, may be seen, faithfully depicted, types of the life and 

 character of a time passed, or fast passing, away, which, if not of any 

 particular loveliness in themselves, have yet their historic or other 

 interest, and here, too, the counterfeit pi'esentments of some of this 

 young nation's leaders, the great men who, according to their own 

 account, made or saved the country, as to some of whom at least it may 

 be an interesting question with Art Gallery visitors of the future, 

 whether they were not as much counterfeit as their presentments. 



State aid to art, however, is not limited here to the National Art 

 Gallery or the periodical purchase of a few pictures. There is also a 

 subsidy of £500 a year to the Art Society for the conduct of instruction 

 classes, with which, by the way, another state institution, the Technical 

 College, in its art classes is more than suspected of competing. It is 

 objected in the one case by the students, that the instruction given 

 is not commensurate with the cost, and in both, perhaps, not altogether 

 unfairly, by the taxpayer, that high art education is not the proper 

 business of the State. One is reminded hereof the Irishman's famous 

 definition of the fine arts — '' Music, paintin', and the ladies " — and 

 substituting here for the " ladies " the poets, it is asked why the 

 poet and the musician, who, like the painter and the sculptor, must 

 be made as well as born, and are certainly not less necessary, should 

 not have equal advantages. Moreover, there is the general objection 



