"The Royal Academy Exhibition. [Fifth Notice.]" Critic 9.224 (1 Aug. 1850), 381-383.

excerpt

Mr. Collinson has reason to complain of the hangers. His former work entitled him to consideration; and his Answering the Emigrant’s Letter (No. 448) of this year shows–what, however, nothing short of an opera glass will reveal–an advance is executive skill, some portions being painted with extraordinary delicacy. Besides this, the subject is of so unostentatious a description, as evidently to require to be fully seen in all the detail of its rendering in order to be at all appreciated. A contemporary observes that there are no means of determining that the letter is being written to an emigrant; but a microscopic investigation would have satisfied him that the principle figure holds a map of the district: and from this the inference is obvious. Many nice gradations of incident and character have been here condemned to oblivion.