One of the Finest Art Critics I Ever Met

In 1962, critic John Canaday reviewed an exhibition of nineteenth-century American genre paintings selected to highlight the “almost forgotten” name of Thomas Hovenden (1840–1895). Canaday focused on Hovenden’s Breaking Home Ties (fig. 119), noting that when the painting was on display at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, “people lined up for blocks to see it, and wore out several replacements of the carpet in front of [it] as they stood admiring it.” It was unlikely that anyone would …