_From the_ WESTERN DAILY PRESS, _Feb. 20th_, 1901.

AN IMPRESSION OF "ECCE HOMO."

_To the Editor of the Western Daily Press_.


Sir,--First impressions forced upon me by an inspection of the
picture, "Ecce Homo," by Mons. de Munkacsy, would be succinctly
expressed in few words. It is haply, although not highly, inspired. It
constitutes a work of laborious but of average ability, and descends
to a lower technical state of imaginative eclecticism and expression
than I had indeed expected to encounter in so lavishly-applauded a
work. Let it be granted in the first instance that the theme is an
onerous one; the problem afforded by the venture should have been
met in a manner skilful in art, commensurate with its righteous
obligations and its lofty demands by the artist. The one fine
attribute conspicuously lacking in the work is its illumination,
generally too yellow; the fine quality of light, naturally directing
the hearts with the intelligences of the beholder to the central fact
of the subject theme, "I am the Light of the World." The broad use and
disposition of whitish pigment; I mean whitish, snowy light flecked,
pimpled, dimpled with tints of orange and purple, like snow about to
thaw, here and there, honeycombed or stippled to mark the intensity of
its native regard for its own divine, suffering, martyred Lord, would
have attracted the attention and won the curiosity, the sympathy, of
many finer sensibilities. A dramatic and subtle sense of distance,
such a powerful agent of spiritual injection in the hands of real
artists is in this work absent; never skilfully employed either for