The Critic by Herbert Cole, fl. 1900 (original) (raw)

The Critic

Herbert Cole, fl. 1900

Ink, pencil and watercolour on paper laid on board

8 x 7 7/8 inches, 20.3 x 19 centimetres

Inscribed on the reverse "The Critic"

Herbert Cole was an engraver and illustrator who exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1898 and 1900.

Another work by the same artist: The Sphinx

Sally Burgess points out that "Herbert Cole casts an eye back to medieval and Renaissance art in which the skeleton is used to suggest the fruitlessness of earthly vanities and the inevitability of death," and one may add that the women gazing in her mirror, which we see in Rossetti's Lady Lilith, is an tradition symol of vanity and has comon elements with Edmund J. Sullivan's Truth and the Prince of Lies (1898), an illustration to Carlyle's Sartor Resartus.

References

Nahum, Peter, and Sally Burgess. Pre-Raphaelite-Symbolist-Visionary. London: Peter Nahum at Leicester Galleries. Catalogue number 56.

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Last modified 20 October 2004