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Tag Archives: English art

Object of the Month: October 2017

Wittenberg, October 31, 1517

Oil on canvas, Signed and dated: E. Crowe, 1864 (lower left)

Eyre Crowe, A.R.A.

English, 1824–1910

Click on links for additional reference information.

Martin Luther truly changed the course of history, but it was English painter Eyre Crowe who captured the defining moment. Wittenberg, October 31, 1517, has long been a favorite of M&G guests for its historical accuracy. “Story paintings,” a common name for the genre of this piece, invite investigation, and recent research on Crowe’s work has revealed that there is “more of the story to tell.”

The obvious historical event being pictured here is Luther’s nailing of the 95 Theses to the door of the University of Wittenberg Chapel. But it may very well be that Crowe purposely wove together additional personages and objects which served to emphasize the crux of the matter which prompted Luther’s action – plenary indulgences offered by the Roman Catholic church.

The prominent horseman on the left, Johann Tetzel, holds in his left hand a grid-like object with dangling metal bulla. The embedded papers, inscribed with numbers representing days or years in purgatory that could be lessened, were purchased by anxious parishioners seeking to relieve themselves or their dead of suffering.  Coins clunking in the coffer Tetzel holds evokes the rhyme that still rings through the halls of history.

Worshippers could also acquire relief from anguish by employing a prayer to Mary, Christ’s mother, called The Rosary. In order to count the component invocations, or “tell the beads,” individuals held an object known as a rosary. Rosaries took on many forms (chaplets, ropes, decade and pomander rings) of varying materials (wood, glass, seeds and plastic). Crowe identifies medieval rosary rings reminiscent of a carnival ring toss game by placing examples in the foreground. He continues to add additional weight to his emphasis by sprinkling rosary types, either held or worn, near the significant people in Luther’s life. Research required to accomplish such a historically accurate piece likely led Crowe to such paintings as The Arnolfini Wedding by Jan van Eyck and The Feast of the Rosary by Albrecht Dürer both of which contain prayer beads.

Prominently represented left center and wearing regal garb is Margaret of Münsterberg with her son George III clinging to her skirt. Bereft of her husband, Prince Ernest I of Anhalt-Dessau, and left with three sons too young to assume regency, Margaret undertook her new position as princess regent with vigor and religiosity. Strongly adverse to the Reformation, she organized the League of Dessau. Though unsuccessful in thwarting the spread of the Reformers’ teaching, it is very possible the League exposed her sons to Luther and his doctrine. Letters were exchanged between Luther, Margaret, and her offspring, which resulted in her sons’ adopting the tenets of Lutheranism in their adult years. George ultimately was ordained by Luther, making him the only German prince to be inducted into the Lutheran clergy.

As if to make a final point on the issue of indulgences, the artist places in each of Margaret’s hands a rosary – one a ring and the other a wooden beaded arrangement. A woman of means who could certainly afford some of the extravagant materials used for rosaries of the period, Margaret, however, emulates her sovereign ruler, Charles V, by clutching a poor man’s wooden one.

In Eithne Wilkins’ The Rose Garden Game; the Symbolic Background to the European Prayer Beads, the author details the varying philosophies associated with a worshipper’s choice of rosary materials:

Beauty of material and elaborate workmanship over against ascetic simplicity remains an issue, as might be expected throughout the centuries.  The principle of making the external object conform with the interior purpose can be interpreted in two ways. One may feel, as Lady Godiva did in the eleventh century, that it is fitting to count one’s prayers on jewels, for they are being offered to God. Or one may feel that a wretched sinner like oneself should not presume to offer prayers on any but the plainest beads. This sort of self-abasement may even be more effective than any flashing of gems. That was so when in 1532 and again in 1541 the Emperor Charles V, taking part in the Corpus Christi procession at Regensburg, carried ‘ordinary little brown wooden beads’: it was, the commentator pointed out, ‘to mark his humility.’ The ostentation of some people’s display evoked criticism as early as 1261, and fashion was not always on the side of luxury: Emperor Charles V carried ordinary little brown wooden beads…to mark his humility.

Crowe has also included the historical likenesses of other key people from sixteenth-century Wittenberg on the right side of the painting.  Katherina von Bora, the nun who eventually married Luther, is present with Luther’s father, mother, and sister. To the left of Katherina von Bora is Luther’s artist friend, Lucas Cranach, the Elder.

Wittenberg, October 31, 1517 is exhibited as part of Luther’s Journey: Experience the History on view in the Gustafson Fine Art Center on the campus of Bob Jones University. Information about the exhibit and the accompanying tour is available here: www.museumandgallery.org/specialized-tours/

Bonnie Merkle, Internal Database Manager and Docent

 

 

Published in 2017

Object of the Month: March 2017

Martin Luther Discovering Justification by Faith

Oil on canvas, Signed and dated: E M Ward, R A, 1868 (lower left)

Edward Matthew Ward, R.A.

English, 1816–1879

 

Edward Ward’s portrait of Martin Luther Discovering Justification by Faith draws on traditional elements of portraiture. Like most scholar portraits, this one places the sitter in his “study” surrounded by precious manuscripts and books on theology.

An enormous Bible is chained to the lectern. Bibles were rare and expensive to construct during the sixteenth century and were usually chained so that they would not be moved or lost. But here the chain is also symbolic. In the context of the reformer’s inner turmoil, the chain represents the inaccessibility of God’s Word—an obstacle that Luther is about to overcome through his discovery.  This moment of enlightenment is also foreshadowed by the light streaming in through the open window, a common motif symbolizing heavenly illumination.

In addition, the hourglass as a symbol of time represents not only the brevity of this life (through the falling sand) but also the possibility of resurrection (through reversing the glass).

Like Ward’s beautifully rendered portrait, the following fragment from Luther’s autobiography vividly captures the power of this moment:

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which, through grace and sheer mercy, God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on new meaning, and whereas before ‘the justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me the gate of heaven.

Click on the dropdown information below for further insights:

The reformers varied attitudes on the use of images in worship
 

Although opposed to the veneration of images, Martin Luther did not object to using art in worship or in education. According to Luther, images “are neither good nor bad.” They are “unnecessary and we are free to have them or not.” He went on to say that visual art may be of considerable benefit in preaching and teaching the good news (as his artist friends the Cranachs sought to do).  However, the leading Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli disagreed vehemently with Luther on this issue. Zwingli who preached for twelve years at the famed Grossmünster’s pulpit in Zurich ordered all altar paintings and statues removed from the church. This church, which still stands today, remains “quite bare, entirely stripped of the statues and paintings denounced by Zwingli.”

 

Common ground
 

As the years passed the debate on the use of images in worship and religious education became less strident, though differences remained. For example, unlike Luther’s followers, artists like Jan Victors who embraced Calvin’s ideas refused to paint images of God (including God the Son), opting to focus on Old Testament scenes or New Testament parables.

Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac was one subject that captured the imagination of those on both sides of the debate.  This Old Testament narrative adumbrating Christ’s atoning grace was central to all Protestant theologians, but the prophetic vehicle allowed artists who held views similar to Zwingli or Calvin to avoid violating their conscience in visually rendering God the Son.

The Sacrifice of Isaac by Lucas Cranach, the Elder, a friend and follower of Luther captures the climactic moment of the story.

The reproduction below is by one of Calvin’s followers, Jan Victors. Victor’s rendering of  the biblical narrative captures the intimate moment between father and son just before Isaac is bound the altar.

79abraham_and_isaac_before_the_sacrifice_jan_victors_1642

 

 

 

 

Donnalynn Hess, Director of Education

 

 

Published in 2017

Object of the Month: May 2016

Vashti Refuses the King’s Summons

Oil on canvas, Signed and dated: E. Long, 1879 (middle right on servant’s bracelet)

Queen Esther

Oil on canvas

Edwin Long, R.A.

English, 1829–1891

Click on the links throughout the article to view additional artists’ works and reference material.

Esther is one of only two women who merit an entire book in Scripture, but that is not the only characteristic that makes Esther unique. The elegant style and tightly woven plot used in the telling of her story has also made this book one of the most admired literary works in western as well as eastern culture.

Nineteenth-century British artist Edwin Long “translates” this storytelling power into a visual format. A member of the London Royal Academy, Long was known for his meticulous attention to historical detail and for his ability to use visual texture to enrich his scenes. His painting of Vashti (left, M&G’s Collection) captures the dramatic opening of the biblical narrative—Vashti’s refusal of the King’s summons.
The servant girl in the foreground of this work then becomes Queen Esther in his second painting (right). The demure pose and restrained, melancholy expression of both Queens not only illuminates each character but also anticipates the tension that will soon unfold in each of their lives.

Both works were first exhibited at Burlington House in 1879 (though not side-by-side). Vashti Refuses the King’s Summons is now part of the collection at M&G; an original variant copy by Edwin Long of Queen Esther currently hangs in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Click on the video to hear art collector Andries van Dam’s response to M&G’s Vashti painting.

Donnalynn Hess, Director of Education

 

Published in 2016

Object of the Month: September 2014

Patience

Oil on canvas

Frederic James Shields, A.R.W.S.

English, 1833-1911

Click on the links throughout the article to view additional artists’ works and reference material.

Frederic James Shields, the creator of this work, was one of many provincial artists to embrace the tenets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Like many artistic movements, the Brotherhood began with a small group of youthful idealists decrying the conventions of their day. The founding members, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt were a diverse set of friends with one thing in common—a genuine admiration for  “the immaculate purity of Pre-Renaissance art” (K. E. Sullivan). This passion, coupled with their growing disdain for London’s Royal Academy, motivated these young painters to set down four principles to govern their work.  These principles (or “declarations” as the young men labeled them) were:

  • To have genuine ideas to express;
  • To study Nature attentively;
  • To sympathize with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote; and
  • Most indispensible of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.

Time would mellow some of the Brotherhood’s youthful disdain (Millais later became President of the Royal Academy). More importantly, it would refine and extend the Pre-Raphaelite vision.

The famed Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition (1857) “awakened” the Victorian public to a wide range of artistic venues including Pre-Raphaelite art. It was at this exhibition that Frederic James Shields first encountered the meticulously executed, vibrantly colored canvases of Rossetti, Millais, and Hunt. Shields later studied with Rossetti, and the two became life-long friends. However, the rich detail and typological symbolism in works like Patience reveals that Shields’ artistic technique and iconography are more in tune with William Holman Hunt’s oeuvre. A comparison of the topological symbolism in Hunt’s The Hireling Shepherd with Shields’ commentary on Patience illustrates some of the fascinating similarities between these two artists’ approach to subject and technique:

Set upon a sundial, her ankle chained thereto, her motions circumscribed with its time-measuring limit, stands Patience. Wings has she like a dove’s, but not till God shall loose her chain shall she fly away and be at rest.  Meanwhile she waits, crowned with thorns, with eyelids dropped as seeing things invisible, and lips, firm closed, like unto the Lamb of God, who brought to the slaughter, opened not His mouth.  Her once green garment is faded, stained and tattered with storm and wrack, and she is environed by sharp thorns and thistles, the thorns bearing still some lingering withered leaves of the past winter, and putting forth fresh green shoots (new woes fast on the heels of the old ones, and the thistle seeding to multiply yet more). She keeps pressed to her bosom the word of Christ’s patience, and bears His yoke, its noose around her neck.  Moreover, she carries a basketful of seed corn, and from her girded loins hangs a sickle (Frederic James Shields).

Donnalynn Hess. Director of Education

 

Published in 2014

Object of the Month: October 2013

 

Wittenberg, October 31, 1517

Oil on canvas

Eyre Crowe, A.R.A.

English, 1824-1910

Wittenberg, October 31, 1517

Click on the image to learn more about Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation!

Created by Donnalynn Hess, Director of Education

 

Published in 2013

Object of the Month: August 2013

Sir Henry Irving as Richard, Duke of Gloucester

Oil on canvas

Edwin Long, R.A.

English, c. 1829-d. 1891

Henry Irving, the foremost actor in England from 1866 to 1902, was the first actor to be knighted for his artistry, which helped raise the social standing of the acting profession. As the premier actor and director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Irving produced plays known for their lavish spectacle and melodrama. The expensive productions included the musical talents of composers Mackenzie, German, Sullivan, and Stanford and the literary contributions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Irving’s major achievement was in presenting a play as a unified whole rather than as an excuse to showcase one great talent. In Irving’s productions, the music, lighting, costume, sets, and interpretation of his character all supported the text and the author’s intent. This revolutionary approach to drama gave Irving a permanent place in theater history.

Irving and his leading lady Ellen Terry were especially famous for their Shakespearean roles, and this painting captures Irving in one of his most successful characters. Richard III is the story of an evil younger son who plots and murders his way to the throne of England. Here, the detailed medieval costume of dark, rich fabrics, along with Irving’s nervous gesture and shifting, sideways glance are meant to reflect the evil cunning of Richard’s character and his guilty conscience. Irving’s slight stoop reflects Richard’s physical deformity, described as a “crooked back” with “his left shoulder much higher than his right.”

Portraits of actors in costume were fairly common during the 1800s, and Irving was painted many times—most notably by Edwin Long and Sir John Everett Millais. This painting was one of three from Long commissioned by Baroness Burdett Coutts. When the portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy of London in 1878, it was considered to be “the best portrait yet painted of the popular tragedian” and a good example of “the skill with which [Irving] made up for Richard after the best authorities for look and action.” Since Irving’s 19th-century audience knew his power as an actor and his association with this character, they would have easily understood the portrait’s significance; understanding the context increases our own appreciation today.

 

Published in 2013

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