Bibliography of the New Art Criticism of Elizabeth Robins Pennell (1890–95)

Abstract

Better known as the co-biographer of the celebrated artist James McNeill Whistler and the wife of the talented American illustrator Joseph Pennell, Elizabeth Robins Pennell (185 5-1936) has traditionally been viewed as an appendage to high profile men in the Victorian art world, diminishing her independent contributions to art, mainly her art criticism.1 Pennell's other notable literary contributions, including those pertaining to travel, cookery and cycling, have eclipsed her critical writings on art, thus further obscuring her criticism. One reason for this is that, unlike her other writings, Pennell used a variety of pseudonyms, all of which resist identification, such as N.N. (No Name), A.U. (Author Unknown) and P.E.R. (her initials jumbled up). While myriad other reasons account for the fact that Pennell's criticism has been overlooked, the objective of this article is not to account for this negligence, but rather to shed light on a forgotten, yet noteworthy, aspect of her work. Pennell's criticism constitutes a vital component of a wider movement in Victorian criticism that came to be known as the Art Criticism, the groundwork of which was laid at the end of the 1880s, culminating in the first half of the 1890s. The Art Criticism is a loose term referring to a body of critical work championing the new painting, as manifest in the art of the French Impressionists, chiefly Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, which struggled to gain currency in Britain during this time. The New Critics, who also included Alfred Lys Baldry, D.S. MacColl, George Moore, R.A.M. Stevenson, Charles Whibley and Frederick Wedmore, were a seemingly disparate group of individuals who happened to be in one accord saying the same thing, according to John Alfred Spender, assistant-editor and art critic of the Westminster Gazette, the first to identify this burgeoning faction in the art press.2