PRIGSBY ON FORM
The image above is a detail from George Du Maurier’s original artwork for a cartoon that appeared in Punch magazine in 1880 featuring a “distinguished amateur” art-critic.
You may be familiar with the cartoon because it is often associated with Oscar Wilde, who had similarly taken to art criticism with his debut piece of journalism—a review of the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery for the Dublin University Magazine in 1877, an exercise he repeated in 1879 for the Irish Daily News. This cartoon appeared some months later and features the character Prigsby who, despite the pince-nez, has a Wildean aspect.
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