Here was the reaction to Damien Hirst headline-grabbing, non-conceptual art projects (otherwise known as old-school painting). Critics, however, were not so impressed with the exhibition of 25 paintings a few years ago.

“There’s a lot of niggling overdrawing,” writes Adrian Searle in the Guardian. “Hirst’s paintings lack the kind of theatricality and grandeur that made Bacon succeed. At its worst, Hirst’s drawing just looks amateurish and adolescent.”

“The problems with the exhibition begin when you study the paintings themselves,” writes Sarah Crompton in the Telegraph. “Although they have impact as a group, individually many of the paintings simply don’t pass muster. Details are tentatively painted; compositions fall apart under scrutiny.”

Half a shark and a packet of crisps thankyou

“There are many painters in evening classes much worse than Hirst,” writes Tom Lubbock in the Independent. “On the other hand, you’d find quite a few who were better, too. To try to be accurate: Hirst, as a painter, is at about the level of a not-very-promising, first-year art student.”

What are these paintings “doing in the home of such masters as Rembrandt or Poussin, Titian or Fragonard?” asks Rachel Campbell-Johnston in the Times. “The answer is simple: They are by Damien Hirst. The artist who has made his reputation with shock now produces works that are shockingly bad.”