Fenwick, then a newly elected Associate of the Academy, and at what seemed to be the height of his first success as an artist, had sent in a picture to the Spring Exhibition which appeared to the Hanging Committee of the moment a perfunctory thing.

They gave it a bad place, and an Academician told Fenwick what had happened.

He rushed to Burlington House, tore down his picture from the wall, stormed at the astonished members of the Hanging Committee, carried off his property, and vowed that he would resign his Associateship.

He was indeed called upon to do so; and he signalised his withdrawal by a furious letter to the _Times_ in which the rancours, grievances, and contempts of ten chequered and ambitious years found full and rhetorical expression.
The letter naturally made a breach between the writer and England's official art.

Watson, who was abroad when the whole thing happened, had heard of it with mingled feelings.