Turner 's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage was described by the Athenaeum as 'one of the noblest landscapes of our gifted artist; it has all the poetry of his best pictures, with all the true natural colouring of his less imaginative compositions' ( Finberg, The Life of J. M. W. Turner, p. 334). The Athenaeum reiterated its support for Turner following criticism of this work: 'We know not how such a dunce came to be enrolled amongst men of taste: he ought to know that imagination is as necessary to a work of genius as light is to day' ( Finberg, The Life of J. M. W. Turner, p. 335.)