Liverpool Cathedral: Art, Faith and Modernity

Sacha Llewellyn and Paul Liss have been responsible for significant exhibitions in recent years which have enabled the prodigious talents of Winifred Knights and Evelyn Dunbar to be reviewed. Through Liss Llewellyn Fine Art, they have, since 1991, been engaged in a wider work of restoring to prominence those in the artistic circles of which the likes of Knights and Dunbar were part. These were artists for whom spirituality and religion were often a central element within their inspiration and practice and, therefore, it should be no surprise that Liss has now brought works by these artists together in a linked series of exhibitions under the title of ‘Art, Faith and Modernity’.

The artists included in this touring series – the second of which is at Liverpool Cathedral from 6 – 30 August 2019 – are symbolists and muralists who were successors to the Pre-Raphaelites by dint of finding inspiration in works of the Italian Renaissance. The exhibition at Liverpool Cathedral includes works by Evelyn Dunbar, Sir Thomas Monnington, Winifred Knights, Rachel Reckitt, Helen Blair, Sir Frank Brangwyn, Edward Halliday, Barnett Freedman, Clare Leighton, Francis Spear, John Tunnard, Glyn Jones and Charles Mahoney

A comment by Thomas Monnington on Allegory, part of the collection of the Tate, two sketches for which are included in this show, sets the scene for the dilemma that, in a secular age, faced artists with spiritual sensibilities who were inspired by religious art. When first asked by the Tate about this work, Monnington wrote that is was a personal interpretation of the story of the Garden of Eden. When later pressed to elucidate further, he then denied that it was based on the Garden of Eden but claimed it as ‘an attempt to express in pictorial form my attitude to life – almost my faith’ (letter of 2nd April 1957). Liss suggests that ‘Monnington’s attitude was typical of his generation’ as, ‘although religion was not a defining ingredient of his art, the search for meaning in a wider spiritual context was’.

While this may reflect the attitudes of the artists whose work is shown here, the works themselves primarily utilise Biblical imagery, with the only works that are more abstract and conceptual being those by Rachel Reckitt and John Tunnard. Some pieces derive from church commissions, such as Frank Brangwyn’s Study for central panel of Nativity window, St Mary the Virgin, Bucklebury, Berkshire and Francis Spear’s Christ Derided, but several others reflect personal inspirations rather than commissioner’s requirements.

Despite this, religious commissions were forthcoming for Knights, Monnington and, unhappily, Glyn Jones, as well as Brangwyn and Spear. Monnington and Geoffrey Houghton Brown reflect the influence of Maurice Denis, through his writings and teaching on L’Art Sacré. The work of Helen Blair and Knights show modernist methods applied with particular aplomb to Biblical scenes. A version of The Good Samaritan by an unknown artist set at the Belgian Front at the end of WW1 is particularly evocative and highly unusual.

‘Art, Faith and Modernity’ has been selected as one of the ten best summer collections by the Daily Telegraph and the Art Newspaper. This interesting exhibition of modern works, loosely grouped under the umbrella of religious art, draws attention to one of the richest – though under-researched– aspects of 20th century British visual culture and calls for a reassessment of the place that religious art occupied in 20th century Britain.

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