PUNCH begs most solemnly to assure his friends and the artists in general,
that should the violent cold with which he has been from time immemorial
afflicted, and which, although it has caused his voice to appear like an
infant Lablache screaming through horse-hair and thistles, yet has not
very materially affected him otherwise--should it not deprive him of
existence--please Gog and Magog, he will, next season, visit every
exhibition of modern art as soon as the pictures are hung; and further,
that he will most unequivocally be down with his _coup de baton_ upon
every unfortunate nob requiring his peculiar attention.
That he independently rejects the principles upon which these matters are
generally conducted, he trusts this will be taken as an assurance: should
the handsomest likeness-taker gratuitously offer to paint PUNCH'S portrait
in any of the most favourite and fashionable styles, from the purest
production of the general mourning school--and all performed by
scissars--to the exquisitely gay works of the President of the Royal
Academy, even though his Presidentship offer to do the nose with real
carmine, and throw Judy and the little one into the back-ground, PUNCH
would not give him a single eulogistic syllable unmerited. A word to the
landscape and other perpetrators: none of your little bits for PUNCH--none
of your insinuating cabinet gems--no Art-_ful_ Union system of doing
things--Hopkins to praise for one reason, Popkins to censure for
another--and as PUNCH has been poking his nose into numberless unseen
corners, and, notwithstanding its indisputable dimensions, has managed to
screen it from observation, he has thereby smelt out several pretty little
affairs, which shall in due time be exhibited and explained in front of
his proscenium, for special amusement. In the mean time, to prove that
PUNCH is tolerably well up in this line of pseudo-criticism, he has
prepared the following description of the private view of either the Royal
Academy or the Suffolk-street Gallery, or the British Institution, for
1842, for the lovers of this very light style of reading; and to make it
as truly applicable to the various specimens of art forming the collection
or collections alluded to, he has done it after the peculiar manner
practised by the talented conductor of a journal purporting to be
exclusively set apart to that effort. To illustrate with what strict
attention to the nature of the subject chosen, and what an intimate
knowledge of technicalities the writer above alluded to displays, and with
what consummate skill he blends those peculiarities, the reader will have
the kindness to attach the criticism to either of the works (hereunder
catalogued) most agreeably to his fancy. It will be, moreover, shown that
this is a thoroughly impartial way of performing the operation of soft
anointment.