Summary
Mr. Selwyn Image frames a definition of art wide enough to take in King Lear, Michelangelo's Creation, a Veronese painting and a passage of Gibbon, all of them expressions of 'man's thoughts and emotions on fine things.' Dwelling on resemblances, he concludes that the Impressionists have made beautiful work but that painting can also hold the spiritual visions of Blake and the romance of Rossetti.
Over the refreshments Image provides, the audience grumbles at his fairness: one wants more than 'sweet reasonableness' from a leader, another says only an auctioneer should admire all schools. Wilde finds the lecture suggestive, though unclear in its use of 'literary', and doubts that drawing from a plaster cast would improve any critic. The unity of the arts, he says, lies in their shared message, and a critic who lacks a receptive nature will not gain one by painting in water-colours.