Escaping Criticism?

To those websit readers who wrote to say that yesterday's post was not a man driving a woman around in a car, but part of a feature on futuristic "boat commuters" -- my apologies for not exploring the full range of TheVisualDome series.

How I came to write what I did is based on a picture I saw online, and from that, what this picture suggested. So much of what we see on the internet is removed from its larger context, but of course that's no excuse for not exploring its origin, its range, something I am quick to despair in others.

The picture up top is of Pere Borrell del Caso's Escaping Criticism (1874), a painting I smile at, but one whose title seems amiss. If we're gonna get all meta about it, is the subject really escaping if the painter is there to capture him? Not just in paint but in the command to "Stay still"? Is that command not subject to criticism? Is the painter not exploiting child labour?

If the frame were not painted, would it mean more or less than it already doesn't? To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, "It's [art's] illusions that I recall/ I really don't know [art] at all."