ABSTRACT
MacColl (1859–1948) was ill when the first PostImpressionist exhibition opened in 1910, but in this, his first contribution to the debate about Post-Impressionism, he offers one of the most closely reasoned attacks on the concept of Post-Impressionism as Fry presented it to the British public. He had studied at both London and Oxford universities and then under the painter Fred Brown in 1889. As art critic first for the Spectator (1890—6) then the Saturday Review, MacColl was one of the most staunch supporters of Impressionism. He regularly exhibited at the New English Art Club and the Goupil Gallery and in 1911 became Keeper of the Wallace Collection. In this article he points out some of the contradictions in the view of Post-Impressionism as, on one hand, ‘classical in its tendencies’, and, on the other, a version of ‘romantic’ expressionism.
