PBA Galleries

1 pp.

Letter to the editor of the Boston Transcript, with clipping of printed letter attached: “THE ENGLISH WATERCOLORS AT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS…in the whole collection of watercolors there are eight pictures contributed by London dealers at my request, for artists who would otherwise have been unrepresented. The circumstances of collecting the pictures from the artists, and everything connected with the exhibition, were made public in England, and there is no disguise about the matter.” Called an “artistic showman”, Blackburn (1830-1897), editor of the magazine London Society and Notes of the Royal Academy of Art, and author of a classic “Art of Illustration”, had organized an exhibition of British watercolor artists whose work was as yet unknown in America, including Alma-Tadema and his close friend, children’s book illustrator Randolph Caldecott. Blackburn was well-known, but not entirely popular, in American art circles, being hissed by a New York audience for declaring "the want of a national character in American art". The Times called him the "patronizing castigator of American ignorance of the fine arts" and unfavorably reviewed the works in this exhibition as being marked by "conservatism and conventionality of style"