Jaynie Anderson, the third Herald Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne, initiated the study of Australian art historiography with fine accounts of the three scholars – Ursula Hoff, Franz Philipp and Joseph Burke – who form the focus of this book. Surprisingly, Professor Anderson’s contributions are barely mentioned, and she is not listed among the fifty-five people Sheridan Palmer has consulted. Some published memoirs of past students of Philipp and Burke go unmentioned in the text and are omitted from the bibliography. None of this encourages.

From the start, names of prominent figures are misspelled. Adalbert Stifter, the nineteenth-century Austrian novelist, becomes ‘Walbert Stifter’. Jacob Burckhardt turns into ‘Burchardt’; we are even treated to ‘Burchardtian’. Sir Sydney Cockerell gets two strikes as he becomes ‘Sir Sidney Cockerall’. Alois Riegl, the Viennese art historian, is ‘Reigl’ in these pages. Artists, too, take a pounding from Dr Palmer’s errant spellcheck. Yves Tanguy is now ‘Tanguey’; and Robert Delaunay is ‘Delauney’. ‘Moshe Kistler’ is, I take it, a stab at Moishe Kisling; ‘Teitsis Zikaris’ is a wayward attempt at Teisutis Zikaras; and his fellow Centre 5 sculptor Vincas Jomantas must surely be Dr Palmer’s ‘Vincent Yomantis’. Tachists are now ‘Taschistes’; the Durack Ranges are ‘Durak’; and scholars write ‘magnus opus’ and so on.