Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1902-08-28
'cnRIsr IN arr.
Painters Do Not Bring Out strons Indivi
uality of the Saviour.


uaiity of the Saviour.
Brooklyn Eagle.
One Of the clergymen in this city
has made his protest against the preva-
lent type of Christ in art His protest
is timely, for, instead of improving on
the presidents established by the old
masters, the painters of our time are
only refining upon the Christs of Ger
many and Italy, and continue to be-
lieye that the man who wandered about
the hot; fields Of Palestine, sleeping
in the open air and living like peas
ant, was a man OF peaches and cream
complexion, sleek golden hair, i'm
maculatS in respect of dress, and per-
petually wearing an expression that if
We were to see it on living face we
should consider to be polite boredom.
Nor is the objection to be pictured
Christ confined to facial expression and
impossibilities in dress and grooming /;
it is the type that is wrong.
Ninety-niIie IN every hundred of the
unoounted pictures Of the Lord are
offensive because they lack truth of
environment, and because they show a
weak, lackadaisical man, instead of a
strong Individuality. Christ was a
leader. Not only did He win his
apostles to Him, but he drew the null
titudes. One who does that sort of
thing is not a pretty man, not man
| nice in his manner, nor a man who
minces words and moves feebly, but a
man of vitality and courage, who says
what he means, who has such faith in
himself that he cares nothing for OPP
position. whose mission in life he is
determined to fulfill. The man with
whom the majority of painters have
familiarized us is a milksop.
This unfortunate type results from
an extreme of reverence in those who
made it, The painters feared to i'm
| part the ,grosser attributes of humanity
to an ideal. They stained the spiritual
with as little of tine earthly as it was
! possible TO concede and continue the
shape OF a man. The result was a
compromise in which there was none
of the substance and yigor of the man,
and in which it was impossible to rep
resent the purity or tenuity of spirit
Their Christ was q girl, and one of
chlorotic tendency. Is it possible
that they thought Christ like this
was most admired by women worship
pers? IL is time for reaction, for we
have hints of it in other arts as we'll as
in pictures, the. poetry OF the Christian
religion preferring man who lacks the
obvious traits of manliness, while in
oratorio fireworks of Christ are almost
invariably given to high tenor, a
custom thai has been recently broken
by assigning the part to baritone.
He vino scourged the money changers
out of the temple, who tramped the
hills OF Judea, who, from His birth in
stable to His death at the hands of
public exeoutioners, knew none of the
softness Of life, we may be sure was
not the kind Of teacher that was en-
bodied from the respect and timidity
of the early painters. The American
Page painted what was known as "the
butcher Christ, = in which he tried to
emphasize exactly those phases that
the older painters had repressed, and
more recently Munkacsy has painted a
Christ before PLATE" and a cruci-
fixion, in which the central figures
were modelled from Hungarian Jews,
with whom the painter was familiar
Tissot, the Frenchman, who studied
for some years in the Holy Land, came
still nearer to the possible type, for he
painted the jew of Palestine, while the
crowds that figure in the sacred pic
lures are not clean persons glowing in
robes of crimson and blue, but are like
lowgrade crowds everywhere, dirty,
unkempt, half-clothed and low proved.
If carried to extremes of realism the
art of Munkacsy and Tissot would be
more offensive than the art of Raphael,
Tintorretto and other goody- goody
men-fine colorists, good composers, il
you like, but indifferent OWNERS and
creators of character there is no
reason why sacred art should be any
more realistic than landscape art, or
the genre of the academies of the pres
emit day. The medium should be
| sought. There must be a veracity that
will assure us of the painters knowl-
edge, and refinement, spirituality
that will win us to his ideal--a higher
ideal than he can ever express, but
which he can hint in form and color.
And there must be doing away with
the maudlin, weak, effeminate figure
that has 80 long stood for one of the
most purposeful and courageous men
in history. s5,t