Vew from the chair: Speeches of Richard WL Austin

3 Vote of thanks to the Australian Legal Group, accepting their gift of a llmlted edition of new Australian lithographs, 29 September 1988 It gives the Gallery great pleasure to have been chosen as one of the recipients of this generous gift, and it gives me great personal pleasure to accept it on the Gallery's behalf. Today, art and money go hand in hand and today's artists are fully aware of the value of their product. Art of the past has always been expensive; but today, so also, is art of the present. Artists no longer starve in attics and walk to work. They are more likely to live in English country houses like Sir Sydney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, or in a villa in Tuscany like Jeffrey Smart, and drive a Rolls Royce like Pro Hart. Tempora mutantur, as they say. The problem for galleries with a comparatively small amount of money to spend on acquisitions is obvious. And the corollary is equally obvious. Galleries need generous friends as never before--both individuals and corporate benefactors. And when they appear, we are duly grateful as, indeed, we are today. This is a particularly well-chosen and representative portfolio covering some of the best known artists in Australia today, including-I am happy to see-one of our fellow Trustees, Lawrence Daws. My own personal pleasure in all this is somehow quite different. Had it not been for the War and the will of God, I would almost certainly be counted today amongst the givers rather than the receivers. George Allen was my great-great-grandfather on my mother's side. As long as his grandson and my grandfather, Arthur Wigram Allen, was alive and senior partner of Allen Allen & Hemsley, I was expected to become a member of that firm and grandfather can best be described in Rumpolean terms as 'he who must be obeyed'. I did, indeed, serve two years of my articles to Norman (later Sir Norman) Cowper, but then the Second World War came and I ended up doing other things. On behalf of the Gallery, I thank you most warmly for this portfolio. 4 Speech to introduce the Premier, the Hon. Mike Ahern, to unveil L•homme aux rubans 1921-22 by Chaim Soutine, I February 1989 Once again we are honoured to have the Premier with us to unveil the Gallery's latest major acquisition, the portrait Man with ribbons by the European painter Chaim Soutine. His presence says much for his own and his Government's commitment to the arts in Queensland, and to this Gallery in particular, and for this we are duly grateful. This painting is the first major European purchase for a number of years-Two trees on Mary Street . . . Amen! 1975 by Willem De Kooning was the last-and it fits 52