POLITICAL AND SOCI.ll.. 



'45' 



of several flourishing art societies in Sydney, Melbourne, and elsewhere. The artists of 

 the Colonies work cordially together to advance the interests of their common calling 

 and to develope the public taste in this direction. One of the most popular means to 

 this end is the annual exhibition held in these two cities, to which art-workers all over 

 the Colonies send their pictures and other evidences of effort. After a judicious pro. 

 of selection by an accredited committee, the best work of the year is exhibited to tin- 

 public, and the growing taste of the population is abundantly evidenced by the interest 

 taken in these annual exhibitions, as well as by the increasing sale which the better 

 artists obtain for the pictures brought directly under the notice of the people at large. 

 As in the case of literature, so in art, it has been remarked that so far the work of 





THE INTERIOR OF THE PRINCESS THEATRE, MELBOURNE. 



local artists has not yet reflected distinctively the character and colour of life and nature 

 in Australia. It has been a charge against local painters that their art is largely imita- 

 tive, and that, so far, they have not yet adequately profited by the novel conditions of 

 artistic effort in a new country. Every successive year's exhibition, however, shows that 

 progress is being made in this direction, as well as in others ; and the chief difficulty in 

 the way of the more advanced among Australian artists is now the tacit prejudice on 

 the part of those who might be the wealthy patrons of our Australian art school, 

 against anything that does not come from the older art centres of the world. Such a 

 prejudice as this, so long as it continues to exist, cannot fail not only to prove fatal 

 to the best representative work that might be produced, but to the prospect of anything 

 like distinct individuality on the part of art-workers in Australia in the future. Just as 

 it has passed into a by-word that a book by an Australian author must bear the 

 imprint of a London publisher to have any chance of general acceptance in the Colonies, 



