In the Frame for December 2012

Throughout the history of Western art, painters have time and again returned to the Christian Bible for solace and inspiration. The artists whose works are represented in the collections of Bethlem’s Archives and Museum form no exception to this. Yet, of all the books of the New Testament, we might think that its last – the Revelation of St John – would be the least likely to feed the imagination. We might think this…but we’d be wrong. When we read that Thomas Hennell, the artist and sometime Maudsley patient, was “reduced to tears of misery” and “threw away the Bible which had been not long before the intensest source of inspiration”, saying “How disappointing the books of Revelation and of Daniel now appeared!”,¹ perhaps we are tempted to counter “Don’t start with apocalyptic!” But that is precisely what artists from Jonathan Martin to ‘Little Flower’ have done. Whether this was good for their mental health is, of course, open to question.

This month the Archivist takes In the Frame ‘on holiday’ again to feature the work of another artist (with Maudsley connections like Hennell) who was inspired by Revelation. The Leaves of the Tree were for the Healing of the Nations is a stained-glass window constructed by the Irish artist Wilhelmina Geddes and installed into St John’s Church, Malone Road, Belfast in 1920. The title is taken word for word from Revelation chapter 22 in English translation. The Archivist saw the window on a recent trip to Northern Ireland, and cannot improve upon the description given of it by the art historian Nicola Bowe in 1984: it “positively sings in a patchwork forest of greens through which throng small meditating souls in bright pink, ruby, blue and gold, each piece of glass chosen and painted with the greatest thought and care”.²

This is a vision easily recognisable within religious iconography, one of a future paradise in which the Tree of Life quells the strife and conflict ushered in by the primordial Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. A relatively uncommon choice of subject for a stained-glass window it may be, and perhaps all the more poignant for that. It was commissioned in the immediate aftermath of World War I to express the hopes, then widely shared, of a better future; yet within a year of its installation, Ireland had been partitioned amid bitter wrangling, and four years later Geddes herself was temporarily admitted to the Maudsley Hospital in London following a breakdown in her mental health. In 1923 The Irish Times reacted to the modernism of her work by opining that “her glass is quite unlike that of most other stained glass workers; the religion which it reflects is the religion of power and fighting, not the religion of peace and restfulness”.³ But Geddes’ passion was not poured into sectarianism; she accepted commissions from Catholic and Protestant churches alike. On the evidence of the window at St John’s, and on that of her own biography, her passion was to heal and not to harm.

¹ Thomas Hennell, The Witnesses (University Books, 1967), p. 167.

² Nicola Gordon Bowe, ‘Wilhelmina Geddes’, Irish Arts Review, 1984, p. 58.

³ The Irish Times, 14 July 1923, quoted in Nicola Gordon Bowe, ‘A Window with Punch’, Apollo Magazine (September 2008), pp 74-79.

Detail from Wilhelmina Geddes’ The Leaves of the Tree were for the Healing of the Nations

In the Frame for August 2011

This month one of our volunteers has chosen to highlight a painting titled Freedom by an artist known only as ‘Little Flower’. He writes:

‘When I first came across Freedom I was reminded immediately of one of my favourite paintings, Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) by Paul Gauguin. This was partly due to the biblical references in both pieces, but also a common richness and depth to the colours and fluidity to the depiction of figures. Both exude a kind of comforting warmth, despite their boldness.

‘This sense of cosiness is subverted somewhat by the work’s subject matter. The quotation in the bottom left is from Revelation, hardly the most comforting book of the New Testament. Freedom is essentially a figurative representation of chapter 21, which describes John’s vision of the kingdom of heaven or the new Jerusalem. This is the walled city in the background, a city of “pure gold, like unto clear glass”. The figures in the foreground may be the kings of the saved nations referred to in the inscribed quotation: “…and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.”

‘These illustrative aspects are fairly clear. More elusive, however, is a sense of the artist’s relationship with the text. The Book of Revelation, with its mysterious symbolism, has always been fertile ground for imaginative interpretation. I found myself wondering not only about the artist’s understanding of the chapter, but also his or her emotional response to it.

‘As one might expect, this passage from Revelation does contain references to damnation, a “lake which burneth with fire and brimstone”. But the main body of the text focuses on the rewards in store for those who escape this fate. The title, Freedom, seems to indicate that the artist has focussed on this redemptive theme, perhaps even drawn comfort from it. We are unsure of the artist’s identity, and I’m uncomfortable with making any assumptions about how he or she was feeling when this piece was created. However, the wonderfully lyrical promise contained in chapter 21, verse 4 would have a powerful appeal to anyone experiencing distress of any kind.

‘“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”’