Mixed blessing | 11 November 2006

The subtitle ‘Artist, Author, Word and Image in Britain 1800–1920’ sets out the aim of one of those curator-inspired delvings into the vast stock of a great and fairly ancient museum. It repays several hours of study as the devil, as so often, is in the detail. The Fitzwilliam — unlike many other, larger art museums — is particularly strong in rare books and literary manuscripts, which provide some of the most pleasing exhibits.

For those who find many of our museums a little po-faced, the visitor could do worse than start with the last section ‘Where’s the Joke?’ There are superb cartoons by Beerbohm, Bateman and du Maurier (full name George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier), which perfectly embody the show’s title and whose humour is fully apparent only when one has read the words as carefully as one has ‘read’ the picture. My favourite is Edmund Dulac’s satirical, circular watercolour of Ricketts and Shannon, whose caricatured faces are superimposed on two four-armed Vishnu-like deities.