Art Notes: A Haven for Grief in William Dyce’s St. John Leading Home his Adopted Mother

Abstract

Art NotesA Haven for Grief in William Dyce’s St. John Leading Home his Adopted Mother Kathryn Wehr, Managing Editor Key Words Painter William Dyce, Tate, Burial of Jesus, Virgin Mary in art, Nazarenes, Pre-Raphaelites This issue’s cover shows a scene that is rarely depicted: the moments after the burial of Jesus Christ. Scottish artist William Dyce (1806–1864) develops his subject from John 19:26–27 where, from the cross, Jesus entrusts his mother to the care of John the beloved disciple: “Woman, behold, your son,” and to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” The Evange-list then comments, “And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.” Here we are shown the imagined first act of that loving attention. Click for larger view View full resolution William Dyce was one of the most significant artists of mid-nineteenth-century Britain1 and is associated with both the Nazarene and Pre-Raphaelite movements; yet he is not a true member of either school. In his early sojourns in Rome to study, Dyce met several German Nazarene painters who lived a semimonastic communal life and eschewed the neoclassical style of the eighteenth century in favor of natural poses and landscapes. This influence along with an admiration for Renaissance artist Pinturicchio (1454–1513), inspired Dyce with a [End Page 161] lifelong sense of vocation to religious art, interest in fresco technique, attention to local natural detail and a preference for open air painting to emulate natural light.2 After his return to Britain, he introduced the younger Pre-Raphaelites to art critic John Ruskin, and there was reciprocal influence with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in terms of rich colors, open air technique, and subjects, particularly landscapes and Arthurian legend (see Dyce’s last great series of frescoes at the Palace of Westminster). Many of Dyce’s paintings focus on rugged British landscapes: notably Scene from Aran (1860) and Pegwell Bay, Kent—a Recollection of October 5th, 1858 (1860), which both feature meticulously detailed natural beauty combined with people amid the everyday activities of doing laundry or shell-seeking. The landscapes of his religious art were sometimes critiqued as too British, notably The Man of Sorrows (1859) and The Good Shepherd (1859), which appeared to place Jesus in the Scottish highlands (a critique that shows how the medieval tradition of depicting sacred scenes in local landscapes had given way in the Age of Reason). In St. John Leading Home his Adopted Mother, however, the Scottish scrublands give way to a more sparse but accurate inclusion of Palestine plants. The dark, low clouds set a hushed, somber tone with the city of Jerusalem brooding in the far-left background.3 The three pairs of figures are isolated from each other: Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleophas at the tomb’s entrance, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea (carrying a soiled winding sheet?), and in the foreground, St. John and Our Lady. The soft purples and greens of the background make the red of the Virgin Mary’s dress a vivid reminder of her Son’s passion, as does Dyce’s choice of her keeping the crown of thorns as a memento. Her dark navy cloak deepens our sense of the sorrow washing over her and the turned-over gold of the hood suggests a halo. When we compare the completed version with an earlier sketch, we can see more of Dyce’s choices at work. Dyce was clearly dissatisfied with the sketch’s background and scraped it all away, but the changes in clothing and figure placement that we can see from this to the final painting are striking. In the sketch, [End Page 162] St. John is taking charge and supporting the Virgin Mary from behind, while in the final version they are connected only by their hands and with space between them, emphasizing the sense of helpless isolation from each other in their grief. Again, Dyce changed the Virgin Mary’s cloak to be darker, more fully enveloping, and closing her off from view, further emphasizing her unique grief as Our Lord’s Mother. In the sketch, it is St. John who leads the Virgin, while in...