Ann Proctor, A Watercolour Retrospective at the Masterworks Gallery in Bermuda House Lane.

Ann Proctor needs no introduction. Her exacting, beautifully executed paintings, usually of flowers or fruit are well known and admired.

Her one-woman retrospective that opened last Friday at the small Masterworks Gallery in Bermuda House Lane off Front Street consists mainly of works already in private collections and borrowed for the occasion. Only three are priced for sale.

The occasion comes about indirectly through the artist's friendship with the late Patricia Calnan, for many years the arts and theatre critic for this newspaper.

It is a show that Pat would have thoroughly enjoyed both seeing and writing about and is a fitting tribute to one of Bermuda's most distinguished and articulate friends of the arts.

Pat had been encouraging Mrs. Proctor to produce a book of her work for which Pat was to write the text. Her unfortunate death put an end to the project, but it is one that would still be well worth the effort to undertake.

As a retrospective it is particularly interesting because it demonstrates not the usual change of style, often not always correctly called growth, but a steadfast adherence to a genre and style the artist long ago mastered.

One knows what to expect and one knows that it will be almost faultlessly executed. The flowers and fruit vary, the compositions vary, the colour schemes vary, and the mounts and framing vary to enhance the paintings. It is almost impossible to find fault.

The immediately striking works are of magnolias. They are striking because their subject is; they are big brash luscious flowers.

My favourites, however, tend to be her paintings of fruit. The have a little more strength and body. There are two of loquats, one so rich and sumptuous that one can imagine a posse of little boys planning a raid on the tree to get their hands on them.

There are oranges ready for juicing; limes ready to enliven a gin-and-tonic; Allenholm apples not quite ripe enough to crunch ones teeth into on a crisp autumn day; bay-grapes nowhere near ripe enough to become jelly; ripening Natal plums protected by a phalanx of vicious spikes; and a cluster of blueberries not quite ready for pie.

Of flowers the show runs the gamut from the extraordinarily delicate, two twigs of peach blossom, to the robust and authoritative, Calla lilies, gladiolas, bird of paradise, and a single muscular sunflower.

The latter two are prints available for purchase. One that might have been bold is an exquisite, delicate agapanthus, caught in the earliest stage of its bloom.

It has the same shimmering beauty occasionally seen ephemerally in less gaudy fireworks. The detailing is superb. The show fills the gallery, not always the case here in the past.

Unfortunately there is no future. The Masterworks Gallery is to close at the end of January and will be the third art gallery in Hamilton to close in the last year.

First to go was the Windjammer Gallery, sustained for a while after the death of Mrs. Sudie Curtis, whose dedication and occasionally whose own splendid paintings made it the most professional of the City' galleries.

It seems likely that the charming 19th century cottage that housed this gallery so effectively will give way to another office building.

The second was the Heritage House Gallery, once comfortably combining antiques and paintings and successful in its old space on the nearer end of Pitt's Bay Road, now given over to yet another office building.

In its new, much less satisfactory space business wouldn't cover the rent. It should be remembered, too, that Masterworks, a charity, enjoyed what was essentially subsidised space.

The Allan Vincent Smith Foundation, also a charity, was forced out of its small space opposite because it could no longer afford the rent.

There will soon, therefore, be but one commercial art gallery in Hamilton, the Desmond Fountain gallery, in which the sculptor-proprietor shares limited space with other artists.

The City will be considerably the poorer for it. It seems likely that Hamilton will, sooner or later, become an insurance and financial centre rather than the cultural and commercial as well as political capital of our Island.

Things that enliven the city and give it grace like art galleries are being priced out of business.