So this has arrived, from England, and is now on the dining room wall. We've all met this guy, haven't we ....? So convinced of his genius; a kind of literary mansplainer. And - though this hasn't come out very well in this particular shot - the most wonderful detail of all is the dog at his feet. chewing up the sheets of the precious manuscript.
Sold as "anon, c. 1860" by Abbott & Holder (my go-to source of wonderful Victorian art for, hmmm, forty years - indeed, I know my parents took me to their previous gallery more like fifty years ago ...), and coming, they said, from a private sale, I have, of course, tracked it down as well as I can. Assuming the title remained the same, John Knighton Thomson (1820-1888) exhibited “An Unappreciative Audience” at the Society of British Artists summer exhibition in 1879. London-based Thomson, judging by the titles of works he exhibited at the RA, BI and elsewhere (and according to Wood) was very much in the tradition of Frith and Elmore, moving between genre paintings and historical subjects. I haven’t tracked down any reviews of this SBA show, as yet, that do anything more than mentioning Thomson’s work as worthy of note - but it's great to have identified it as far as possible. It's also interesting to have a contemporary-life painting of humans (as opposed to animals, or a historical or literary subject, or a cartoon) that's unmistakably comical.
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