August 19, 2008: Reynolds on the Unreliability of Artists - 0 Comments

Regarding the manner in which artists depict historical characters in the modus vivendi of their own age:

"I have often wondered when and how this historical sense began, and how far it has carried us. The Victorians certainly thought they had it, and were doubtless attentive to sartorial detail in a stage play; yet their mediaeval romances are merely fairy-stories about themselves, rigged up in fancy dress and waving property Excaliburs. Will our own work look any more convincing to the irreverent gallery of Posterity?"

- Reginald Reynolds, Beards: Their social standing, religious involvements, decorative possibilities, and value in offence and defence through the ages, 1949