Paul George Konody was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) in 1872. After his education in Vienna, he moved to London, England in 1889 where he worked as a well-known art critic and journalist for over 40 years. During his long career he published many books and articles, some making controversial claims and challenging opinions on modern art.
Art critic and journalist Paul George Konody was born to Alexander Max Konody and Aloisia Olga Alexander in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) in 1872. He was educated in Vienna, and moved to London, England in 1889, where he was naturalised as a British citizen on 19 December 1894 and ‘was quickly occupied in various activities connected with art’ (‘Mr. P. G. Konody’, The Times, 1933). He married watercolourist Isabel Codrington in 1901 and the couple had two daughters (they later divorced in 1913). In London they enjoyed a social scene of artists, poets, and writers. Between 1900 and 1902 Konody edited the Artist journal, published The Art of Walter Crane (1902), and began writing art criticism widely. This included a collection of essays on Welsh artist Frank Brangwyn in The Magazine of Art, in which Konody argued for the artist’s ‘unique position among modern British artists’given his development of ‘an individual style from mere personal observation of nature and from the loving study of the art of the past’ (Konody, 1903). Konody also contributed regularly to the illustrated gentleman’s magazine The Idler, published in London and distributed in the USA. He was elected a master of the Junior Art Worker’s Guild from 1903 to 1904.
From 1906 Konody was art critic for the Daily Mail and the Observer, his most long-held and notable positions. He contributed his ‘Art and Artists’ column in the Observer for over 20 years, as well as many other articles, including his controversial claim that at least some of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings were ‘merely the ravings of a maniac’ (Higgins, 2019). Meanwhile, in the Daily Mail he caused a persistent controversy, challenging German art historian Wilhelm von Bode’s claim to have purchased a work by Leonardo da Vinci by suggesting that English painter Richard Cockle Lucas was in fact the artist. Konody, it transpired, was correct (Randall, 2021). Konody also published several books on art and artists, including The Louvre with Maurice W. Brockwell (1910), described by the Manchester Guardian as ‘scholarly and well balanced’ (‘New Books’, Manchester Guardian, 1911).
As British art became increasingly experimental and polemical in the early-twentieth century, Konody maintained a critical stance towards new movements of the day. Considered an expert in the Renaissance, he showed a particularly conservative scepticism of Post-Impressionism, Futurism, and Cubism. For instance, he criticised Post-Impressionism by comparing it to an infantile world of scribbling (Rosner, 2005). Reminiscent of the Bode controversy, Konody also made further claims on authorship, this time examining art collector Hugh Baker’s Isleworth Mona Lisa and concluding that the artist was in fact da Vinci (Konody, 1914), a claim that still divides the art world. Baker stated that ‘when this opinion was endorsed by an art critic of Mr. P. G. Konody's standing, I felt convinced there was at least good ground for investigation’ (Eyre, 1915). In 1918, During the First World War Konody published Modern War Paintings by C. R. W. Nevinson (1917), while the following year, as agent for the Canadian War Memorials Fund, he commissioned Anglo-Jewish artist (and former sapper) David Bomberg for a painting celebrating the contribution of Canadian sappers. On viewing the completed work, Konody announced that Bomberg had created a 'futurist abortion' (Cork, 1994); Bomberg was eventually allowed to produce another, less controversial image, Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company (1919, National Gallery of Canada). Postwar, Konody was appointed Commissioner in Great Britain for the Art Section of the Canadian National Exhibition held in Toronto, Canada in 1921, and for the European Exhibition in Australia in 1928. Writing for Apollo in 1928, he described the British art of the Venice International Exhibition as ‘humiliating’ in its ‘heterogeneous gleaning of meritorious pictures, drawings, and sculpture’ (Konody, 1928).
Paul George Konody died in London, England on 30 November 1933, from a pulmonary embolism after an operation for a duodenal ulcer. His funeral was held at Golders Green Crematorium, and was attended by many high-profile mourners, including Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere who owned Associated Newspapers (‘Funeral Service’, The Times, 1933). Bethnal Green Museum posthumously opened the Paul Konody Memorial Library, containing more than 2,000 of Konody’s art books for the use of art students and scholars (‘A Paul Konody Memorial’, Observer, 1934). Konody’s work as an art critic, as described in his obituary in The Times, serves as a reminder that ‘art criticism, in the newspaper sense of the words, whatever else it may be, is a branch of journalism; and that the first duty of a newspaper critic is to keep its readers informed of what is going on in his particular field of activity, with such judgement of quality as it is in his powers to give. One might or might not agree with Konody’s judgements, but they were always frankly stated in terms that the rapid reader could understand’ (‘Mr. P. G. Konody’, The Times, 1933).