A hundred years ago
The Art world has been interested this week in a libel case. Mr Ruskin does not like those formless sketches, looking like pictures seen through darkness or fog, which Mr Whistler calls 'Nocturnes', 'Symphonies' and the like; and in a number of the 'Fors Clavigera' Mr Ruskin said so, in his own way. He blamed the Grosvenor gallery for admitting work 'in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture'. He had seen so much of Cockney impudence, 'but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.' Of course the witnesses all artists were opposed to one another, the Judges facetious and the jury perplexed; but in the end, the aggrieved painter obtained his verdict and a farthing's damages, the jury apparently thinking the criticism quite true, but still illegal.
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