Mr. Wedmore’s volume of essays is prefaced by a chapter entitled “A candid word to the English reader” in which he makes serious charge against the Englishman as an art critic. Some observations on Venetian art, Goya, Richard Wilson, Romney, Laurence, Watts, Etty, and others may be passed over to find the real worth of the book in the papers on Whistler, Fantin and Boudin, English watercolour, The print collector. Constable’s English landscapes, and The Norwich school.
“His critical method is not exhaustive but suggestive, and no inventory of qualities could so stimulate the imagination as one of his pregnant summaries.”
+ + Acad. 71: 31. Jl. 14, ’06. 970w.
“The essays and fragments that make up the volume are in part reprinted from various periodicals. Some of them seem hardly of sufficient importance to warrant the more permanent form.”
+ – Dial. 41: 285. N. 1, ’06. 180w.
“Perhaps the best piece in the book is the study of Fantin and Boudin. We wish that some of the other articles had been undertaken in a like spirit of respect for his subject and respect for his reader.”
+ – Lond. Times. 5: 202. Je. 1, ’06. 1000w.
“It was, however, an error of taste to pad the volume out with trifling notes which may have served well enough to introduce a temporary exhibition or to characterize a single painting.”
+ – Nation. 83: 99. Ag. 2, ’06. 220w.