SURREALIST WORK BOUGHT.
Victorian Art Gallery.
TRUSTEES' DECISION.

BY OUR ART CRITIC
 

The Victorian National Art Gallery trustees have accepted two paintings by Australian artists, one a Sydney painter, offered by the Contemporary Art Society.
 

They are "We Inhabit the Corrosive Littoral of Habit," by the young Sydney artist, James Gleeson, and "Salvation from the Evils of Earthly Existence," by Eric Thake, of Melbourne.

Both pictures were exhibited at the Contemporary Art Society's exhibition, held at David Jones' Gallery last September, and are surrealistic.
 

The paintings were accepted by the trustees of the Victorian Gallery against the advice of the director, Mr. J. S. Macdonald. Mr. Max Meldrum told the trustees that they should not accept them "at any price."
 

"This is not a new form of art, and it has got nothing to teach," he said.
 

The president of the trustees, Sir Keith Murdoch, said: "Whatever they are, they are the best this movement, which is far too great for us to ignore, is producing."

Mr. Gleeson's work created a great deal of interest when exhibited at the Contemporary Art Society exhibition last year. Technically, a very capable painter, he is a sensitive artist, too. His work exhibits a sincerity and depth of mind which too many surrealistic painters appear to lack.
 

Mr. Thake's work was unknown in Sydnev until the exhibition last year and, in spite of his small output - he paints fewer than six pictures each year - his paintings are well known elsewhere in Australia. Mrs. R. G. Casey, wife of the Australian Minister in Washington, took several of his canvases with her to the United States. She purchased one from the Contemporary Art Society exhibition.

[Sydney Morning Herald, 31 June 1941, p.9, col.3.]