When Government archivist John Adams was invited to curate the Bermuda National Gallery's exhibition, "Through British Eyes'' at New York's Morgan Library last year, it was the first occasion on which an exhibition dedicated solely to Bermuda's art had been mounted in the United States.

Now, as Bermuda gets a chance to see the show, it has been revealed that both Ottawa and London are also interested in mounting the show and discussions are currently underway.

Admitting he had been gratified by the opportunity to stage the show and by its reception at the Morgan Library, Mr. Adams feels that this version, slightly enlarged for Bermuda, is even better than the original. "Frankly, I feel the show is more cohesive than in New York,'' he explains. "The room space (in the Ondaatje Wing) is smaller but there is more wall to work with, so we have been able to make it a larger exhibition and have included ten more pictures.'' He and exhibition designer Will Collieson wanted the gallery space to suggest an English interior to emphasise that the pictures -- all from the early to mid-1800s and representing the first known visual impressions of the Island by such artists as Thomas Driver, Col. E.G. Hallewell and Lt. Gen. Gaspard Le Marchant Tupper -- were created in Bermuda but, fundamentally, were painted with British viewers in mind. Indeed, they were taken back to Britain and only recently have some of them found their way back here.

"We decided to paint the walls a warm peach colour which, apart from complementing the grey carpet, makes the space warm and intimate, explains Mr.

Adams. "We feel that's appropriate and for emphasis, Will has brought in certain objects of furniture, books and so on, to create the impression of an early 19th century interior. The pictures no longer look like cold specimens that have just been stuck on a wall!'' Mr. Adams felt it was important to create the right setting. "The Morgan Library is very grand and sumptuous, whereas the Ondaatje Wing alters the emphasis of the show to one that is far more intimate. I think that suits the pictures very well and also improves the viewer's opportunity to appreciate the drawings.'' There have been other changes as well. "I've been able to eliminate certain basic information that we had to have in New York, such as having to explain `where is Bermuda?' and spelling out certain landmarks which are known and taken for granted by a local audience. So that means we have been able to concentrate more on the heart of the matter -- which is how British artists re-made the Bermudian image to suit British ideas of fashion and hierarchy.'' "Through British Eyes'', sponsored in New York by local residents Fay and Geoffrey Elliott, covers the first half of the 19th century when Bermuda, after the loss of the American colonies, became strategically important to Britain and culminated in the building of the massive fortress and naval base at Dockyard. In the days before photography, the military relied on topographically trained draughtsmen, many of them from the officer class of the army and navy, to create accurate representations of their surroundings.

In common with European naturalist explorers, who were now swarming over hitherto unknown lands and continents, the images were aimed not only at educating the folks back home, but also entertaining them -- the more exotic the picture, the more likely the artist would be able to sell his work for profit. He would do this by producing prints of his work in London, or by assembling souvenir albums. Many of the paintings do, however, reveal stylish composition and skilled use of watercolour which had obviously been acquired from private drawing masters.

The more he studied these pictures, says Mr. Adams, the more he was struck by the fact that fashion and class were of paramount importance to the British at that time.

"The artists were basically showing off! And we should remember that only a small group of people had sufficient leisure time to become immersed in the fashions of the day and to acquire artistic standards. So it is interesting to compare the painting of an artist like Thomas Driver with those officer-artists who had been exposed to these fashions. We can see that it was the latter who stylised their landscapes and altered the view to meet the expectations of audiences back home. As artists, they could mess about with what was in front of them -- as long as the end product was harmonious. Now, only the genteel classes would understand all that. All of these insider ideas are reflected in these paintings. So I think this is a rich little show.

"I also believe,'' he adds, "that people can learn from this and get an understanding of what Bermuda looked like in those days. But I also hope that people will get a feeling of how artists manipulated what was reality into images that were acceptable to the standards of the day.'' Apart from the pictorial aspect of the exhibition, Mr. Adams says that the show (and his months of painstaking research) revealed an unexpected insight into the social mores of 19th century Bermuda, "so this exhibition is of as much interest to the social historian as it is to the artist,'' he explains.

"The exhibit is also closely concerned with the story of the British Empire.

I think we tend to forget the importance of the Empire to Bermuda and how it shaped this Island. Bermuda was part of a huge system. You can't view it as an isolated spot because, in the British scheme of things, it certainly was not.'' He notes that some of the images are somewhat exaggerated to express a sense of romantic grandeur, a firm belief in what the artists perceived as the nobility of the overall Imperial mission.

"We tend to view this mentality in a negative way today, but the pictures are first-hand expressions of the British attitude at that time.'' Globe-trotting exhibition From Page 23 "That attitude is shown in the otherwise rather puzzling depictions of early Bermuda as an exotic, sub-tropical island, with flamboyant palms and trees flourishing in the most unexpected places, the themes of many of the pictures being widely panoramic in concept.

"This,'' he explains, "can be traced back to the Imperial urge to categorise the world over which Britain had assumed intellectual control.'' Another purpose of the exhibition, says Mr. Adams, is to highlight and display items from the Archives and to make people aware of yet another important aspect of the Archives' work.

"The majority of the material in this exhibit is held in our Archives and I would like to emphasise that it's normally available to people to view at any time.'' Assistant director Bonnie Dodwell says she hopes that this important exhibition will be seen, not only by art students of all ages, but that teachers of history and social sciences will make the effort to take their classes to study the show.

"Through British Eyes'' opens to the public on February 1 and runs through April 11.

"Open Cave Near Mount Wyndham'', Thomas Driver.