ABSTRACT
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874—1936) began his career reviewing art books for the Bookman and the Speaker. In 1904 he published a book on G.F. Watts. The reproduction of Picasso’s La Mandoline et le Pernod (1911: private collection, Prague) generated a massive and hostile response in the New Age and elsewhere. G.K. Chesterton’s abuse is levelled primarily at what he saw as the poverty of contemporary criticism, but he has equal contempt for the work of Picasso itself.
