THE PRE-RAPHAELITE ARTISTS

1. FROM THE TIMES, MAY 13, 1851

To the Editor of the “Times”

SIR,-Your usual liberality will, I trust, give a place in your columns to this expression of my regret that the tone of the critique which appeared in the Times of Wednesday last on the works of Mr. Millais and Mr. Hunt, now in the Royal Academy, should have been scornful as well as severe.¹

I regret it, first, because the mere labour bestowed on those works, and their fidelity to a certain order of truth, (labour and fidelity which are altogether indisputable), ought at once to have placed them above the level of mere contempt; and, secondly, because I believe these young artists to be at a most critical period of their career-at a turningpoint, from which they may either sink into nothingness or rise to very real greatness; and I believe also, that whether they choose the upward or the downward path, may in no small degree depend upon the character of the criticism which their works have to sustain. I do not wish in any way to dispute or invalidate the general truth of your critique on the Royal Academy; nor am I surprised at the

¹ [The critique appeared on May 7. That it was sufficiently bitter may be gathered from the following portions of it: “These young artists have unfortunately become notorious by addicting themselves to an antiquated style and an affected simplicity in painting. ... We can extend no toleration to a mere servile imitation of the cramped style, false perspective, and crude colour of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli termed drapery ‘snapped instead of folded’; faces bloated into apoplexy, or extenuated to skeletons; colour borrowed from the jars in a druggist’s shop, and expression forced into caricature. ... That morbid infatuation which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere eccentricity, deserves no quarter at the hands of the public.”]

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