Flitch of bacon custom already be well known to the reader. It continued to be awarded until the middle of the 18th century, the last successful claim being made on 20 June 1751. The ceremony of this last flitch award was recorded by the artist David Ogborne who was present at the time to make sketches and, later, engravings. His images were later used as source material by Ainsworth for his novel, "The Flitch of Bacon". Ainsworth's 1854 novel proved so popular that it revived the custom which has continued in one form or another down to the present day and is now held
What is a Masterpiece? confluence of memories and emotions forming a single idea", that it has "a power of recreating traditional forms so that they become expressive of an artist's own epoch and yet keep a relationship to the past". The highest masterpieces are said to be "illustrations of great themes." Clark also implicitly excluded the erotic from considerations of what constituted a masterpiece, based on his perspective that a necessary condition is the balance between sense and form (works that are too sensual are, therefore, unbalanced and not to be categorised at masterpiece level). What is a Masterpiece? What is a Masterpiece? is