19

H.—33

The above considerations give £7,700 as the total annual expenditure of the Dominion Museum, Dominion Library, and the Dominion Art Gallery for the first few years after their establishment in a new building or buildings. That this is not a large amount for a national museum may be seen from the case of the Australian Museum, Sydney. This museum contains scientific and historical collections and a library, but not an art gallery. The expenditure for the year 1913 14 was £10,754, concerning which the Curator states, " The small amount for the support of this museum compares very unfavourably with the amounts allowed for similar institutions in America and Europe, where some museums receive from £40,000 to £50,000 a year." The expenditure of the Dominion Museum for 1912-13, the last year of normal activities, was £3,050

2. COLLECTIONS AVAILABLE FOR THE DOMINION ART GALLERY. (By J. McDonald, Art Assistant.) The collections which form the nucleus of the Dominion Art Gallery arc at present contained, in the Dominion Museum, the Parliament Buildings, and the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, and consist of— The Monrad collection of etchings and engravings; The Chevalier collection of sketches and Water-colours; The Dominion Museum collection of sculpture, oil-paintings, water-colours, etchings and engravings, and other objects of art; The New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts collection of oil-paintings, water-colours, drawings, and etchings; The National collection of sculpture, oil-paintings, Water-colours, and etchings now held in trust by the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts; and also The collection of marble statuary purchased by the Government after the close of the International Exhibition at Christchurch in 1906—7, and Works of art in private hands which will be forthcoming as soon as provision is made for their safety. The Monrad Collection. This collection, consisting of 596 etchings and engravings, represents the Work of over 120 masters of the Dutch, Flemish, Italian, French, and German schools. No less than forty-three of the prints are by Rembrandt, the great master whose influence spread over the whole field of Dutch art during his own life and after it, and passed far beyond the borders of his own land and his own period. The technical ability and the imaginative power of the Dutch school, so perfectly expressed in the prints in this collection, Were widened and deepened by him to limits which only a few masters had reached before his day. Amongst the prints by Rembrandt is the wonderful self-portrait of 1639, which in technical execution is probably the finest etched portrait ever produced. The etching's and engravings by the Dutch artists are especially interesting to us, inasmuch as they reflect the social condition of the land whose fleet then held supremacy on the high seas, and whose exploring-ships, the " Hcemskivk " and the " Zeehan," had pushed their way to the land which still proudly bears the name —New Zealand —given to it by the old Dutch cartographers who mapped Abel Janz Tasman's discoveries in the great South Seas in the year 1642. In this collection there are also nineteen examples of the Works of Albrecht Durer, the. great Nuremberg engraver, who is regarded as having reached the highest perfection in the art. To Durer also is accredited the discovery of the art of etching. Altogether the 596 prints generously presented to the Colonial Museum by the late Bishop Monrad, at one time Prime Minister of Denmark, offer an abundance of material for the study of seventeenth-century art in Holland, Flanders, Italy, France, and Germany. In his letter of the Bth January, 1869,* acknowledging this generous gift, the then Colonial Secretary, Mr. E. W. Stafford, after expressing on behalf of the New Zealand Government the high sense which it entertains of the value of this handsome donation and of his lordship's desire to promote the interests of art and science in this young colony, states that " Directions will be given to exhibit and take every care of this valuable collection, which will ever form a lasting memorial of his lordship's visit," &c. After nearly half a century's repose in the portfolios in which it Was presented the existence of this magnificent collection is known to but a few Government officers, and probably to the few artists and collectors, who, like myself, are interested in this mode of artistic expression.

* 'New Zealand, Gazette, Kith January, 18(ifl.

4-H. 33.