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Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIV, Issue 10786, 25 October 1895, Page 6

Some of the leading members of the Royal Academy have been severely criticised and taken to task for selling their creations to advertising firms, and even executing “ works of art ” to the specific order of “somebody’s soap” or “General pills.” Punch has recently issued a clever skit on the advertising mania introduced between paragraphs of bond fide interest, and publishes a specimen of what we may expect in the novel of the future. There is (says a London paper) undoubtedly a grievance in this respect. There is nothing more annoying, or more likely to make a man want to get up and kick himself than to commence a subleader on the Chitral war or the Salisbury foreign policy, and eventually find himself literally in a lather of Seagull’s Moonlight Soap. We quite agree with this (says another exchange), and hold such a practice to be quite indefensible. There is a time and a place for everything, and there is plenty of scope for advertising without monopolising the reading matter of public interest. There is only one plea of justification, and that is when an article of sterling value and indisputable quality, such as Vanity Fair Cigarettes, is to be brought and kept before the public.