rst2html does not issue a warning when an image file does not exist. For example, this will not produce a warning if the file "this-does-no-exist.png" does not exist:
.. image:: this-does-not-exist.png
I have attached a patch that issues a warning when file insertion is enabled and the image URI is a file URL or a path.
Ticket moved from /p/docutils/bugs/368/
Thank you for the report and patch.
There are, however two issues:
a) The warning might interfere with the workflow for some users as the referenced file may exist in the target directory or as relative URL of the target document.
b) the "file-insertion-enabled" setting is a safety setting for cases where external files become actually part of the generated document and should not be mixed with other uses. http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/config.html#file-insertion-enabled
As the use cases differ widely, I recommend checking the links in generated documents manually or in a document generation wrapper.