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We continued exploring the upper galleries, having gone through the various thematic rooms on the first floor, ranging from Love, Longing and Loss to the In the listening Light - Transitional moments in painting. I was impressed with some of the paintings and more so with the number of artists I had never heard of. The second floor was being prepared for a temporary exhibition, so we didn't but visit the outside North and Eas terraces, which overlooked the Albert park.
Married (right) - oil on canvas - Walter Sadler (Great Britain -1854-1923). While a more ardent lover might have plucked the rose from his wife's lap, her the woman's husband seems more focused on his book. If it ever existed between them, the game of love has been played out.
For such is the kingdom of heaven - oil on canvas - Frank Bramley (1857-1915). This work represents child mortality as a grief common to all people. Like the young middle-class women in the cortège, the little girl clutching the expensive bouquet of chrysantemus wears a white dress almost certainly bought for the occasion. Her unhealthy pallor suggests that death may be waiting to swoop.
Blow, blow though winter wind (As you like it, act II, sc 7 by William Shakespeare) - oil on canvas - John Everett Milais. At the centre of this winter landscape is a helpless dog, divided between loyalty to the shivering mother and child and the poorly clad man who has deserted her. Along with a range of other Winter scenes theis was painted at the end of Milais'career.
A vanitas still life - After Edwaert Collier (The Netherlands -1640-1707). There is said to have been a considerable export of 17th century Dutch vanitas paintings to England from Holland. The globe was included to symbolise the world and man's dominion over it, while books and scientific instruments warn against too much pride in one's learning. The guttering candle, the skull and the hourglas refer to the brevity of life. More specifically the artist listed recent deaths by disease, for which ther was no cure.
Evening at Petone - oil on canvas - Marcus King (1891-1985). This is one of the artist's paintings depicting the changing light and the atmosphere of the Wellington harbour at night.
Sunset - oil on cardboard - James Nairn (1859-1904).
Stormcloud - Oil on canvas and board - Petrus van der Velden (1837-1913). Surging upwards, the artist's stormcloud encapsulates the dualistic vision of nature. Capturing the clouds's shifting light and swirling movements in a specific moment in time, the painting also leads the viewers' eyes up to the heavens, prompting them to echo the cloud's jubilant embrace of the celestial beyond.
Off Kaikura - oil on board - George Butler (1872-1936).Butler is siad to have painted en plein air with the aim of capturing the shifting lights in the landscape. He focused primarily on painting seascapes, for which he forged a strong local reputation. Rather than being panoramic, topographical vistas, Butler's seascapes encapsulate the movement, colour and light of the ocean at specif moments in time.
I was particularly impressed by the fact that children visitors are taken into account and at various places along this last gallery there are questions regarding the paintings that clearly will lead the children to look at those paintings thoroughly and ponder some of the chromatic aspects related to them, as well as expressed feelings and hypotheses as to what the different brushstrokes attempted to convey.
From the upper floor we could see an artistic installation in the lowere level, close to the shop, which seemed very interesting, as it depicted inverted boats carrying a huge number of intricate households and people.
Pillars: Project - Another Country - Alfredo and Isabel Aquizilan.
By the time we left the sun was going down but the rain had temporarily stopped. I was, as I always am, whenever I immerse myself in Art ... happy ..., happy to have had the opportunity to observe and admire paintings by unknown artists to me and to have spent a precious afternoon in such a unique gallery.
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