Dudley Gallery

Dudley Gallery Exhibition panned.

Rossetti, William M. "Fine Art." Academy (October 31, 1874): 130. Web. 21 Sept. 2011.

This is an unenthusiastic review of the Dudley Gallery's oil pictures which Rossetti characterized as "a sufficiently meager collection: mediocrity is spiced with skill, and relieved here and there by something that has artistic purpose or method of a superior kind."

A few of the works he finds worthy of mention are described in his usual two-fold qualitative and quantitative method: narrative description of the painting's story, with qualitative comments regarding the aesthetic values in the execution of the work, looking for "meaning and artistic raison d'etre" and "a capital bit of truth, interpreted by an artistic eye and hand," "the general quality of truth and intellectual observation." Once again, Pre-Raphaelite painters are the example of the highest standard; Sir John Everett Millais is used as a comparison for that purpose; Hughes and Alphonse Legros, two frequent visitors to the Cheyne Walk home of Dante Rossetti are also singled out as the most capable artists in the exhibition (Reminiscences 2:342).

References: Mr. Hughes, Mr. Alphonse Legros, Mr. John R. S. Stanhope, Mr. Poynter, Mr. Sir Frederick Leighton, Mr. George Frederick Watts, Mr. Storey, Mr. Hodgson, Mr. Henry, Mr. Thomas Grahame, Mr. Pepys Cockerell, Mr. Walter Crane, Mr. Wise, Mr. P.R. Morris, E. Epps, Mr. Henry Moore, Miss Alice Thornycroft, Mr. Heywood Hardy, Mr. Forbes-Robertson, M. Regamey, Mr. Hayllar, Messrs. Macbeth, Moore, and Henry, Sir John Everett Millais, Mr. Henry, Mr. Moore, Mr. Hamilton Macallum, Mdme. Cazin, Mr. Alma-Tadema, Mr. Richmond, J. Aumonier, Tristam Ellis, Joseph KnightW. Christian Symons, George Harvey, Lexdon L. Peacock, J.W.B. Knight, Mr. Edwin Edwards,

"He is one of the painters who can treat a subject not calling upon the powers of thoughtfulness or invention, with a dignified reserve and unembarrassed seriousness which avail to keep the work far above the level of triviality and within the limits of fine style in art;" "a sufficiently meager collection: mediocrity is spiced with skill, and relieved here and there by something that has artistic purpose or method of a superior kind." " . . meaning and artistic raison d'etre," "a capital bit of truth, interpreted by an artistic eye and hand," "the general quality of truth and intellectual observation."