ABSTRACT
Philip Gilbert Hamerton is only remembered as the target of J. M. Whistler’s barbs in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, but in his time he was a prolific author and critic. The course of artistic or other discovery appears to be very much the same as the succession of processes followed by an artist in the construction of a certain picture only that in the great field of human progress the work is accomplished by the race, and taken up successively at its different stages by relays of innumerable workers. During the last twelve years the appreciation of modem pictures has become so firmly established that even a living artist may sell his works for prices equal to those given for old canvases of the same quality. It appears that £4,000 is the last price given for a Meissonier to the artist, and given too by a dealer who had to resell at a profit.
