Art criticism the Flashman way

‘In my youth, if a lady of quality had expressed her opinion* — as she has a perfect right to do — d’you think she’d have been dragged before a magistrate? Certainly not! She’d have been sent down to the country for a rest, her father would have bought the damned painting, her brother would have horse whipped the artist and that’d be that!’


* i.e. Attacking a painting with a meat cleaver (Speedicut)


Mr American, p.391, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, youth.

Glorified wallpaper

     ‘I knew it!’ said the General. ‘A piece of glorified wallpaper! None of these modern bastards can paint. Not like Wollen — ever seen his “Last Stand of the Forty-fourth at Gandamack”? That’s painting, if you like. Not that it looked a dam’ bit like the real thing — I saw the real thing, back in ’42, so I should know. But it was a decentish picture.


Mr American, p.390, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, paint.

Her flash arts

      There is a tide in the affairs of men when you simply have to chuck it — as, for example, when you learn that the wife of your unsuspecting bosom is a practised thimblerigger who has used her flash arts to ruin an innocent man.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.260, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, wife.

Bring out the worst

…I’m no great admirer of objects d’art, myself; they just bring out the worst in connoisseurs and female students.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.284, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, connoisseurs.

Where's Flashman?

…it looked very gallant, and has since been commemorated in oils, with camels and niggers* looking on admiringly, and the Chiefs all shaking hands. (I’m there too, like John the Baptist on horseback, with one aimless hand up in the air, which is rot, because at the time I was squatting in the latrine working the dysentery bugs out of my system and wishing I was dead.)

Flashman in the Great Game, p.261, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

*Flashman's use of racial epitahs is a continuing problem for more enlightened, contemporary readers. The inclusion of these passages should not be taken as tacit support of his misanthropic, 19th century view of race relations.