Colour of New Zealand.

Few visitors to New Zealand have realised the colourful charm of the country more vividly than has Mr. P. Bousfield, the English artist, whose exhibition of water-colours, prepared during a ten-months’ visit to this country, has given the public of Wellington and visitors to the Capital City a new insight regarding the colour contrasts and variations found throughout the Dominion.

More frequently do overseas travellers observe what a correspondent describes as “the marvellous visibility “of this land, and in regard to photographs the clear delineation of details, which the clean, bright quality of the atmosphere assists, has frequently been favourably commented upon.

But Mr. Bousfield has done a singularly important service to the country in the rather daring departure from convention he has shown by painting the colour effects with all the vividness they deserve rather than following the customary plan of letting the more sombre tones take charge of the canvas.

He has delighted, too, in the juxtapositions, found throughout the country, of English trees and shrubs in a purely New Zealand setting of mountains, lakes and rivers. This has enabled him to show in his pictures seasonal changes in appearance and tints not provided by our evergreen native flora.

To the average New Zealander, born to the sunshine and the varied colour tones of his country, the natural richness of colouring to which his birthright makes him heir is in nowise remarkable until he has a chance to compare it with the lower range of tints displayed in other countries he visits. A sidelight on this aspect is provided by the comment of a New Zealander who, on a first voyage away, and with mind buoyed up for startling beauty by the rhapsodies of writers and poets regarding the glories of colour found in tropical vegetation, after a fortnight at sea approached Panama, only to discover that the greens of the hills and forests were “just like those of New Zealand.”

Here the whole range of prismatic colours are found in infinite variety, and any artist might “work for an age at a sitting, and never grow tired at all” in the endless attempt to do justice to one of New Zealand's greatest charms—its richness of colouring.

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