Renaissance Days
With the closing of the very successful, Jeffrey Harris, exhibition, Renaissance Days, an exhibition of recent paintings, the Harris Smiths would like to restock and thank our patrons, greatly, for their appreciation. The well deserved and much recommended show deserved enormous acclaim. Jeffrey Harris has been diligently working away on this small set of paintings, in-between exhibitions, for about as long as the Harris Smiths have known one another. The first time New Zealand saw a similar group of paintings was back in the seventies in a successful show, in Wellington. The small size were like precious keepsakes, reminiscent of the late Victorian era where, children and family members were the subject of painters and, early photographers. Similarly, more recently, contemporary, American, figurative painters such as the satirical paintings of John Currin, have also reflected on a bygone era of Edwardian society portraits and Currin is equally influenced by old master painters from the Renaissance through to Mannerism. Also, the transcendental, philosophy of Henry David Thoreau's "Walden or, Life in the Woods", springs to mind.
Jeffrey Harris rose to critical acclaim, in New Zealand, from the seventies through to the eighties with his American debut, in the 1982, Carnegie International, exhibition, in Pittsburgh. This was followed by a move to Melbourne, Australia, in the eighties where, Harris stayed for a further, fifteen years. Australia is also, well rewarded, by the early post colonial, Heidelberg School painters of the era, artists like Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin. Harris's petit society paintings are also of this class, although, the paintings of the Heidelberg School are traditionally larger in size with similar post English memoirs of the late Victorian era being common themes; families and the figure in the landscape. The Renaissance of a society, long past, for the post colonial outposts from England, Australia and New Zealand. However, Harris, holds the Italian and Northern Renaissance, portraiture work, closer to heart. Jeffrey Harris continues on the small series of paintings, looking, reading, traveling occasionally and absorbing the music, Durer's "Saint Jerome in His Study".
Jeffrey Harris looks forward to the Harris Smiths next trip to Italy with another, of the very scholarly and much anticipated, old master, Renaissance art, tours. Society beckons Venice. The exhibition, Jeffrey Harris Renaissance Days, continues with the catalogue address and an impressive book to compliment the fashionable, small, works, well housed in many private and public collections. The continued series of current, Jeffrey Harris, paintings would not be out of place in any society rooms or museums, worldwide. The current address of international sympathy needs to be redressed from London to New York. Current fashions indicate well and Jeffrey Harris is well placed in and, amongst, this forum. We look forward to the current patronage.
