Editorial>

Raymond Francis McIntyre 1879-1933

The painter Raymond Francis McIntyre is a rather neglected figure in the history of New Zealand art. It is true that he counts as an 'expatriate', a painter who, unlike Frances Hodgkins, never 'came back'. And yet he spent the first thirty years of his life in New Zealand, and was already an accomplished painter by the time he left this country (as evident in the watercolour George Street, Dunedin c1907).

Once McIntyre arrived in London (with the heady and accessible painting-world of Paris close by) he really found himself. He met William Nicholson and Walter Sickert (the English Vuillard); was thrown though ultimately stimulated, by the Second Exhibition of Post-Impressionist Art at the Grafton Gallery; and went on to develop in the direction of an increasing freedom of style until his disappointingly-early death at the age of fifty-four. He was just getting underway: but the surviving later works from his hand witness an exhilarating lightness of touch, a sure and daring minimal ism that is unique among the New Zealand painters of his period.

Most of the works by Raymond McIntyre in New Zealand are held by The National Gallery, Wellington. In an article the recently-retired director of the National Gallery, Melvyn Day, writes on McIntyre, his life and his art an essay accompanied by reproductions of fifteen works.

The Fletcher Collection is probably the most extensive assembly of New Zealand painting, both early and contemporary, outside a public institution. A short article on some of the earlier paintings in the Collection begins here.

The article on the Red Mole theatre company is by way of a curtain-raiser to an increasing Theatre content in Art New Zealand, which will have its proper beginning in the next issue, in the hands of contributing editor Brian McNeill.