Art: Britain's Best

The British muscled in on Chicago last week. In the heart of Anglophobe Colonel Robert McCormick's bustling bailiwick they set up a loan exhibition of 62 of Britain's best paintings, by Hogarth, Constable, and Turner. The British Ambassador, Lord Inverchapel, was on hand at Chicago's Art Institute to open the show with a suitably democratic address. Said he: "[These] painters . . . are all of the humble English earth; very earthy, simple folk, men of the people."*

There was nothing simple about William Hogarth, the earliest of the three, who made 18th Century London look like a highly dramatic hell. Nor...

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