Michael Robinson (4) (1950–)

Being a small-format collection of paintings, incorporating a very few sculptures and drawings, highlighting the art of Jno. Millais but with liberal selections from others, mostly from the original eight Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood members. The author has done a good job of bringing in some unfamiliar artists and paintings; I've been reading everything I could find on the Pre-Raphaelites for a quarter of a century and some of this was new to me. His caption comments, though brief, are usually useful; these captions, which face the illustration on the facing page, are joined by the dates of the artist, where and when it was produced, and a suggestion of a related work.

To a considerable extent, however, these strengths are more than offset by problems with the book's production. Inevitably in a small-format book, the illustrations are simply too small to illustrate the points he is making at some points. The light ink and fine print were very tough on these old eyes. And at times he simply misses the boat; too often he tells us things such as 'the three girls in the picture' when there are quite clearly four girls in the painting. And the frequent typographical errors, especially in the artists' dates, are quite ludicrous; attributing somebody to have died before they were born or when they were four, was hilarious when P.D.Q. Bach used to do it, but here not so much. The book is also plenty long; one needs to come to this with an extremely high interest level in Pre-Raphaelites, which I, of course, did.… (more)