'An Art Critic' — Joseph William Comyns Carr

Spy presents the critic and impresario Joseph Comyns Carr — co-founder of the Grosvenor Gallery and champion of Aestheticism — settled in a wood chair with legs crossed, a cigar raised in one hand and the other curled at his chest. The watch-chain looping across his waistcoat signals prosperous confidence; the striped trousers and dark suit read as a man of affairs rather than a bohemian. The caption reads simply 'An Art Critic.' The mild irony is professional: Carr wields a cigar where a lesser man might wield a brush, suggesting that taste, not technique, is his medium — a gentle Vanity Fair dig at critics who orbit artists without being one.