Monkeys as Critics

I just found this image by Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max, a Prague-born Austrian academic, who painted this in 1889. It's title? Monkeys as Judges of Art (33" x 42"). New Pinachotek, Munich, Germany.








It is not with the painter-as- critic that Gammell has issues, but the amateur-as-critic. For example, La Font de Saint-Yenne is perhaps credited as being the first of his genre with the critique of the Salon of 1737:

Other art 'critics' who had little or no experience in painting include:

Denis Diderot (1713-1784)-writer
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)-poet

The Bloomsbury Group

Roger Fry-mid 19th -mid 20th centuries
Clive Bell-(1881-1964)-studied history
Guillaume Apollinaire-(1880-1918)-French poet and writer
Herbert Read-(1893-1968)-anarchist, poet, critic of literature and art
Andre Malraux-(1901-1976)-French author, adventurer and statesman
Clement Greenburg (1909-1994)-English major, manufacturer, essayist
Thomas B. Hess (1920-1978)-editor Art News (1965-1978), studied French art and literature

John Canaday (1907-1985)-art critic for the New York Times

Meyer Shapiro (1904-1996)In 1920 he entered Columbia College, New York, where, having concluded that he would never succeed as a practising artist, he studied languages, mathematics, literature, anthropology, philosophy and art history. He received his BA in art history and philosophy in 1924. His doctoral dissertation, on the early 12th-century cloister and portal of the abbey of St Pierre, Moissac, in south-western France, was accepted by Columbia in 1929.
Hilton Kramer (1928-) see critique of Philip Guston below
Leo Steinberg (1936-) art historian, free-lance writer
Michael Fried-English major, art historian
Rosalind Kraus-art historian and critic
Robert Hughes (1938-)-cartoonist, art critic; Hughes's early ambitions to be an artist and poet led him, possibly unwittingly, to rely unduly on imitation, which resulted in an episode of harsh criticism in student and public newspapers...a published Hughes drawing was described as resembling one which had appeared in a 1955 international art magazine.
Tyler Green-journalist and blogger-(attended the University of Missouri)

I am sure these were and are wonderful people who really like art.   Who in this group is or was a professional painter?  Who in this group really understand the techniques of painting?  Who has ever gotten their hands soaked in turps wrestling with the oil paint under their fingernails?  I suggest that this group is self serving to the group...rather like educators who speak their own language in order to serve its group.