Art: Dutch Uglies

“Pasty or crudely red faces, bulging shiny foreheads . . . rolling chins, fat wrists . . . [these] women are one of the greatest comments on feminine emancipation ever made.” Thus, recently, did a presumably emancipated Londoner write to the London Express describing the subjects of portraits by famed Dutch artists, portraits which had appeared in the Royal Academy’s great exhibition of Dutch art (TIME, Jan. 21).

Many another Englishman faced an esthetic dilemma as he thought of the rosy native graces depicted by Reynolds and Gainsborough. Several wrote to the newspapers. Why did the Dutchmen choose such ugly models? Were they ugly? Last week Publisher William Randolph Hearst’s New York American, agreeing for once with Britishers, echoed the questions and said of Artist Haus Holbein’s Eve: “The mother of the human race . . . appears to be afflicted with adenoids for she is certainly breathing through her mouth.”