# The Critic > Weegee (Arthur Fellig) - 22 November 1943 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/weegee/weegee-the-critic-1943/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-17 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Weegee (Arthur Fellig) - **Date:** 22 November 1943 - **Medium:** Gelatin silver print, printed from a large-format press camera negative. The negative itself is not individually catalogued by any source consulted; see Technical and Current location. - **Dimensions:** Varies by print; no source consulted publishes the original negative's own dimensions. Individually measured prints range from image 10 1/2 x 12 1/2 in (26.7 x 31.8 cm) to a wider 12 1/2 x 16 3/8 in (31.8 x 41.6 cm) print that includes onlookers cropped from the standard composition. Full figures are given under Technical. - **Object type:** Photograph - **Period:** American, twentieth century - tabloid and documentary photojournalism - **Current location:** International Center of Photography, New York (the Weegee Archive). ICP separately catalogues at least three prints connected to this scene; the original camera negative is understood to sit within ICP's general holding of roughly 7,000 Weegee negatives from the Wilma Wilcox estate, but no source consulted assigns the negative itself an individual catalogue number or independently confirms its physical survival as a distinct, identified sheet of film. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary On the night of the Metropolitan Opera's Diamond Jubilee opening, 22 November 1943, Weegee had his assistant recruit an intoxicated regular from a Bowery bar, ply her with wine, and release her into the path of two arriving socialites on a prearranged signal. The resulting photograph, later titled The Critic, was read for decades as a spontaneous collision of wealth and poverty; it is now documented, independently by biographer Christopher Bonanos and by International Center of Photography curator Miles Barth working from the testimony of Weegee's own assistant, as a staged encounter.The two society women are identified: Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh, born Marie Magdalena Muller, and Elizabeth Wharton Drexel, Lady Decies, both long dead and both well documented. The third woman is not identified in any source this record could reach, and this record declines to guess at her name rather than repeat an unconfirmed one. Multiple institutions, chiefly the International Center of Photography via the estate of Weegee's companion Wilma Wilcox, hold separately catalogued prints of the image in at least two different crops, with genuinely unresolved questions about the original negative's whereabouts, the picture's first publication, and its current copyright status.The picture's fame has survived the exposure of its own artifice essentially intact, and has arguably been sharpened by it: a photograph about the gap between appearance and reality turns out to be, itself, a lesson in the gap between a photograph's appearance and what actually happened in front of the camera. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1943-11-22** Weegee (Arthur Fellig) `[documented]` (creation, staged) Weegee sent his assistant Louis (Louie) Liotta to recruit an intoxicated woman at Sammy's Bowery Follies on the Bowery; Liotta plied her with wine and positioned her outside the Metropolitan Opera House, releasing her into the path of Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh and Lady Decies on a prearranged signal as they arrived for the season's opening night. Weegee is reported to have exposed several plates of the resulting moment. This account is corroborated independently by Miles Barth's curatorial research at ICP (via Liotta's own testimony) and by Christopher Bonanos's 2018 biography. - **1943-11-22-1943-12-06** Acme Newspictures / Life magazine (wire distribution and first traced national publication) `[disputed]` (publication) Life published the photograph in its issue of 6 December 1943 with the 'fashionable people' caption. Secondary accounts state PM paid Weegee five dollars for the image but declined to run it as inappropriate for wartime, and that Acme then distributed it nationally with a caption reframing the picture as moral indignation. This conflicts with credit metadata associated with the Wikimedia Commons file, which connects the image to PM's own publication. Both positions are stated here rather than adjudicated. - **1945** Weegee `[documented]` (retitled and published in book form as 'The Critic' in Naked City (Essential Books, New York)) The title by which the picture is now universally known dates only to this 1945 book, two years after the photograph was taken. - **1968-1986** Wilma Wilcox (Weegee's companion, as custodian of his estate after his death in 1968) `[documented]` (gap, private custody) Wilcox held Weegee's prints and negatives privately for approximately eighteen years following his death before beginning to place material with the International Center of Photography. - **1980** The Weegee Portfolio Incorporated (Wilma Wilcox, Sidney Kaplan, Aaron Rose and Larry Silver) `[documented]` (authorized limited print edition made from Weegee's original negatives) This venture is the source of the wider, uncropped print of this scene now catalogued at ICP as Weegee Portfolio 25. - **1986** International Center of Photography (gift of Wilma Wilcox) `[documented]` (acquisition of an individual print) Catalogued as E.L. 1986.55. - **1993-present** International Center of Photography (bequest of Wilma Wilcox) `[documented]` (bequest of Weegee's archive) Wilcox's 1993 bequest of roughly 16,000 prints and 7,000 negatives, including the print catalogued 7229.1993, made ICP the largest single holding of Weegee's work. The original camera negative for this specific image is presumed to sit within that general holding but is not separately identified by number in any source consulted. - **-present** Multiple public institutions holding individually catalogued vintage prints independent of the Wilcox gift: Whitney Museum of American Art (Gift of Denise Rich, 96.90.2), Art Institute of Chicago (Gift of Mrs. Stuyvesant Peabody), the Getty Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the National Gallery of Art (a related Kavanaugh portrait) `[documented]` (independent institutional acquisitions) Exact gift or purchase dates are not published on the records consulted for most of these institutions; two collection pages (Getty, Museum of Fine Arts Houston) blocked automated access entirely and could not be verified beyond the bare fact of holding. ## Open questions - Who was the disheveled woman recruited at Sammy's Bowery Follies? No source consulted gives a confirmed name; she should not be assumed to be Norma Devine, a different, separately documented Weegee subject at the same venue. - Did PM actually publish this photograph on or near 22 November 1943, or did it pay Weegee and decline to run it, with Life's 6 December 1943 issue being the true first publication? The sources consulted give both accounts and this record has not resolved the conflict. - Is the wider print at the International Center of Photography (Weegee Portfolio 25) an uncropped print from the same negative as the standard 'Critic' image, or a separate exposure from the same staged sequence of several plates? - Where is the original camera negative now, and is it individually catalogued anywhere, or does it remain an untracked item within ICP's general holding of roughly 7,000 Weegee negatives? - Is the Anzio leaflet story (a photograph of this scene dropped as Allied propaganda, reportedly recognized by a soldier named Charles Kavanaugh) independently verifiable, or does it rest solely on Miles Barth's account as relayed in later secondary coverage? - Which claim to copyright governs current reproduction of this specific image: the public-domain basis Wikimedia Commons states, or the 'copyright Weegee, ICP, Getty Images' rights line the Whitney Museum's own catalogue attaches to its print? ## Sources - [1] Wikimedia Commons, File:The Critic by Weegee.jpg, file description page and imageinfo/extmetadata via the Commons API. - [2] International Center of Photography, 'The Critic,' collection object record, accession 7229.1993. - [3] International Center of Photography, 'The Critic,' collection object record, accession E.L. 1986.55. - [4] International Center of Photography, '[Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh and Lady Decies entering the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's Diamond Jubilee, New York],' collection object record (Weegee Portfolio 25). - [5] Whitney Museum of American Art, Weegee, 'The Critic,' collection record 96.90.2. - [6] Art Institute of Chicago, 'The Critic,' collection record, object ID 123386, retrieved via the museum's public API. - [7] PopMatters, review of Christopher Bonanos, Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous (Henry Holt, 2018): 'Truth or Fiction?' - [8] Edward Kosner, 'Shots in the Dark,' The New York Review of Books, 6 December 2018, review of Bonanos's Flash. - [9] Terry Teachout, 'The Lost World of Weegee,' Commentary, review of Bonanos's Flash. - [10] 'Well Done! 71 Years Ago Today...,' Fans in a Flashbulb, 22 November 2014, citing Miles Barth, Weegee's World (1997) and the testimony of Louis Liotta. - [11] '"The Critic" @ 75,' Fans in a Flashbulb, 22 November 2018. - [12] Smithsonian Magazine, 'A Night at the Opera.' - [13] Luisa Rollenhagen, 'Nazis loved this photo of America's class divide so much, they allegedly used it as propaganda,' Timeline (Medium), citing Miles Barth. - [14] Wikipedia, 'Weegee.' Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with primary biographical documentation. - [15] Wikipedia, 'PM (newspaper).' Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a scholarly history of PM. - [16] Wikipedia, 'Elizabeth Wharton Drexel.' Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a genealogical or biographical primary record. - [17] Wikipedia, 'George W. Kavanaugh.' Tertiary source; flagged for replacement. - [18] History's Jewel Box, 'Great Jewelry Collectors: Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh.' - [19] TheArtStory, 'Weegee,' biography and overview. - [20] Art Blart, tag archive 'Weegee The Critic,' citing Boo Paterson and Miles Barth. Secondary aggregator; flagged for replacement with the original exhibition catalogue text (Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson / Fundacion MAPFRE, 2024-2025). - [21] Getty Museum, 'The Critic,' collection object page. Holding confirmed; full catalogue detail could not be retrieved (site returned no readable content at time of writing). - [22] Wikimedia Commons, File:Metropolitan Opera House, Broadway & 39th St., New York City LCCN2003665647.jpg (Library of Congress), imageinfo/extmetadata via the Commons API. - [23] International Center of Photography, 'Norma Devine is Sammy's Mae West,' collection object record. - [24] National Gallery of Art, 'Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh and her Daughter Leonora Warner,' Weegee, collection object page. Holding noted via the museum's own object page title; full page blocked automated access and could not be independently verified beyond that. - [25] Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 'The Critic,' collection object page. Holding noted via the museum's own object page title; full page blocked automated access and could not be independently verified beyond that. - [26] Digital Camera World, 'Crime, chaos, and celebrity: Weegee's photography takes center stage at ICP,' for the scale and dating of the Wilma Wilcox gift and bequest and the Weegee Portfolio venture. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.