I saw men prowling about (there was Mr. Thackeray, for instance, as large as life, and a host of other “successful” men—I hate success!) who had evidently made up their minds to be pleased with this, the most disreputable Exhibition that ever degraded British Art. Let them. Thoughts is free, as Mrs. Brown said at the play; and so are mine. It is all very well to get a set of literary time-servers to hob and nob with Academicians at the annual orgie which disgraces Trafalgar-square, and on which hundreds of pounds are spent that ought to be devoted to the development of talent such as that of—well, of some I could name; but I was never invited to the so-called banquet. Banquet, indeed! I would rather maintain my honest independence, though I had nothing to eat but a polony—and this is sometimes the case! Look at young Mr. Marcus Stone. I’ll be bound to say he never eats polonies—and yet all London is talking of his “Napoleon,” whilst my “New Crinoline” has not yet met even with a dealer!
AN ARTIST’S DREAM, AFTER SENDING IN HIS PICTURES WET TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
Look at Mr. Ruskin. What did they do to him? Why, they asked him to dinner! What was the result?
His Critical Notes have never appeared since!! Not that it matters much.
The advantage of the practice of “athletic exercises” by young painters, as recommended by a great critic.
The proprietors of the Royal Academy don’t see why they should be troubled with so many works by other fellows. Oh dear, no! Let them exhibit their pictures outside!
Exhibition, indeed! Why, you can’t see anything—not that there is much to see—for the crowd of gaping women that block up the hideous and uncomfortable rooms with their preposterous crinoline—and yet the Academicians rejected mine! Then, the “swells”—a set of lounging insipid imbeciles, drawling out their vapid Dundrearyisms—and the old fogies, wagging their stupid old heads—I should like to knock a few of them together!—and the smug, smiling fellows whose pictures have been accepted—and the “Art-Critics,” who pretend to see power in a man like Millais, and poetry in a man like Hook, and humour in a man like Marks, but who are far too high and mighty, I promise you, to come up four pair of stairs and see my “Marsh Mallows,”—and if they did, they couldn’t appreciate them! There, I’m tired of the whole concern—pictures and painters and visitors and all—and Mrs. Edwards is bothering me for the rent—and, unless you print this, to show up the impostors, and send the money by return, I shall have to paint sign-boards. David Cox painted one—and I dare say did it badly—for I never thought much of him! Or any other man!