Harold Gilman, ‘Letters to the Editor. The Worst Critic in London’
The New Age, 11 June 1914, p.143.
THE WORST CRITIC IN LONDON.
Sir, – In his article on the New English Art Club, Mr. Walter Sickert, in making a catalogue of all the things that Mr. Lamb knows, tending to show that that gentleman is not an idiot, seems to imply that there is someone – presumably exhibiting in the N.E.A.C. – who does not know those things. I have no doubt that a complete catalogue would show Mr. Lamb’s superiority with more certainty. I am not acquainted with any man who thinks there is any merit in thick paint for the sake of thick paint. Mr. Sickert has himself painted in both thick and thin paint. This violent paragraph of his may be merely his way of expressing his present preference for thin. He will be painting in thick paint in six months. It is, in any case, a technical detail, and depends on the questions of brilliance, permanence, covering power, deliberateness of workmanship, etc., impossible to discuss here.
Was not Mrs. ’Arris the originator of the definition of Style which Mr. Sickert quotes?
I wonder if this row of teachers of Art is set up by Mr. Sickert to be an easier mark for his inevitable cockshies at any society from which he has retired. I read the list of names with profound emotion.
Harold Gilman.
How to cite
Harold Gilman, ‘Letters to the Editor. The Worst Critic in London’, in The New Age, 11 June 1914, p.143, in Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt, Jennifer Mundy (eds.), The Camden Town Group in Context, Tate Research Publication, May 2012, https://www