"Art in September," Magazine of Art, 1884

Of “Artists at Home”—photographs by Mr. Mayall and text by Mr. F. G. Stephens—we have received the first five numbers.  To us, we confess it, the publication, if in some sort useful, is absolutely devoid of interest.  Mr. Stephens’s text is not much more than catalogue; and Mr. Mayall’s photographs—or rather, the photo-engravings on copper plates reproduced therefrom—are singularly lifeless and dull. Everybody looks as though he were sitting for his portrait; the very furniture is posing; and over all is that terrible and tremendous presence, the photographer’s light, “the light that never was on sea or land.” Mr. Calderon affronts the camera with much sternness; Sir John Gilbert has the sun in his eyes, and comes out very white and vague; Mr. Boehm, sitting desultorily among busts and statues, seems to have been caught in the act of reading the paper; while Mr. Alma Tadema, as unlike himself as possible, leans boldly and airily on the chimney-piece, and Mr. Frank Dicksee, austere yet frightened, does even as Mr. Alma Tadema, and Mr. Val Prinsep turns from his picture with a frown, as if he felt inclined to wring the photographer’s neck. Other artists presented to the public are Mr. Webster, the President (a sufferer, but resigned), Mr. Redgrave, Mr. Cousins, Mr. Millais, Mr. Pettie, Mr. Marshall, and Mr. Marcus Stone. The book, which is published by Messrs. Sampson Low, is written with all Mr. Stephens’s wonted emphasis on intimacy and exactness, and will probably be quite as popular as it deserves.