Marx Engels Correspondence 1857
Source: Marx Engels On Literature and Art, Moscow 1976;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
Everyone here [Arts exhibition in Manchester] is now a friend of art and chatters about the. paintings in the exhibition. The affair will be plus ou moins a failure, financially at any rate. There are, by the way, some very fine pictures on show, however, most of those by the good and the best painters are only second-rate pieces. Among. the finest exhibits is a splendid portrait of Ariosto by Titian. The modern German and French school is very bad and practically unrepresented. Three-quarters of the exhibition is English rubbish. The Spanish and Flemish painters are represented best of all, and after them the Italians. You must come over somehow this summer with your wife to have a look at the thing, s'il y a moyen. It won’t do to write anything about this business for the Tribune; I wouldn’t know where to begin in any case, and the Tribune can find the usual tittle-tattle in all the newspapers.