Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1880s

This is Part 1 in a series of posts which aim to demonstrate the breadth of engagement there has been between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. The idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know and the lists reflect my interests and biases. As such, the primary, but not exclusive, focus is on artists that have engaged with the Christian tradition.

My listing begins in the 1880s as that decade is generally taken as the beginning of modern art. However, in terms of my interests, the Pre-Raphaelites and the beginning of the Catholic Literary Revival precede my chosen starting point and I have, therefore, sought to reflect that in some of the early entries.

The introduction to the series can be found here.

• On 22 March 1877 William Morris, Philip Webb and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood hold the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in Bloomsbury, London. In 1879, Morris and SPAB join John Ruskin in the fight to save St Mark's Basilica, Venice from restoration and dilapidation.
• The term Arts and Crafts Movement is first used at a meeting of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1887, although the principles and style on which it was based had been developing in England for at least 20 years. It was inspired by the ideas of architect Augustus Pugin, writer John Ruskin, and designer William Morris. Morris's thought later influenced the distributism of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. Following the first Arts and Crafts church, St Martin Brampton built by Philip Webb in 1878, many more follow, including Broughty Ferry Baptist Chapel (1881), St Chad Hopwas (1881), St Mary Partington (1883), Holy Trinity Bothenhampton (1887).
• In 1880, the Most Holy Governing Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church rules that the church censor could approve the publication of sacred music without the input of The Imperial Chapel. This decision has ground-breaking implications – for the first time in many years, it becomes possible for Russian composers to create sacred music, without being subjected to bureaucratic review. This decision is prompted by the publication in 1879 of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
• Antonin Dvořák's first piece of a religious nature, his setting of Stabat Mater, was premiered in Prague in 1880. The Stabat Mater is an extensive vocal-instrumental sacred work for soli, choir and orchestra based on the text of an old church hymn with the same name. The inspiration for creating the piece was the death of the composer's daughter, Josefa.
• Life of the Virgin murals are created from 1880 to 1887 under the direction of Desiderius Lenz, Gabriel Wuger, and Lukas Steiner for the Benedictine Abbey of Emmaus in Prague.
• In 1881, D.L. Moody and Ira B. Sankey make their second visit to Britain involving mass rallies with full houses in a large number of cities. In 1876, in collaboration with Philip Bliss, Sankey had published a gospel songs collection Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs, consisting of 131 numbers. Over the next 15 years, working with various associates, he produced five supplements to this work, and a complete edition of all six parts in 1894, this last containing 794 numbers.
• In 1881 Wilfrid Meynell accepts Cardinal Manning's invitation to edit the Catholic Weekly Register and continues to do so until 1899. Meynell later founds and edits (1883–94) the magazine Merrie England, in which, in 1888, he discovers and sponsors the poet Francis Thompson, rescuing him from destitution.
• ‘God’s Architect,’ Antoni Gaudi designs a Benedictine monastery and a church dedicated to the Holy Spirit in Villaricos (Cuevas de Vera, Almería) for his former teacher, Joan Martorell, in 1882. He begins work on the Sagrada Familia in 1883.
• Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly publishes Une Histoire sans Nom (The Story Without a Name) 1882, and Ce qui ne Meurt Pas (What Never Dies) 1884. Barbey d'Aurevilly also re-publishes Les Diaboliques (The She-Devils) in 1882, a collection of short stories originally published in France in 1874. Each story features a woman who commits an act of violence, or revenge, or some other crime. It is considered Barbey d'Aurevilly's masterpiece, but he was sued for an affront to public decency when it was originally released. He agreed to remove the book from sale and the charges against him were dismissed. Léon Bloy, a defender of and proof-reader for the novelist, said that Barbey d'Aurevilly was, "The man to whom I owe the most, after my mother and father".
• Hilma af Klint studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Sweden from 1882 – 1887. There, she meets a group of artists who share her ideas. "The Five" (De Fem) are Anna Cassel, Cornelia Cederberg, Sigrid Hedman, and Mathilda Nilsson. They embrace a combination of the Theosophical teachings of Helena Blavatsky and spiritualism. They open each meeting with a prayer, followed by a meditation, a Christian sermon, and a review and analysis of a text from the New Testament. This is followed by a séance. From 1896, Klint creates experimental automatic drawings, leading her toward an inventive geometric visual language capable of conceptualizing invisible forces both of the inner and outer worlds. Her paintings are now considered among the first abstract works known in Western art history.
• Coventry Patmore and Gerard Manley Hopkins correspond from 1883-1888.
• Joris-Karl Huysmans' 1884 novel À rebours begins a return to Catholicism.
• In 1885, James Tissot has a revival of his Catholic faith, which leads him to spend the rest of his life making paintings about Biblical events. He travels to the Middle East in 1886, 1889, and 1896 to make studies of the landscape and people. His series of 365 gouache illustrations showing the life of Christ are shown to critical acclaim and enthusiastic audiences in Paris (1894–1895), London (1896) and New York (1898–1899), before being bought by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900. They are published in a French edition in 1896–1897 and an English one in 1897–1898, bringing Tissot vast wealth and fame.
• The Victorian Association of Spiritualists in Melbourne arranges an exhibition as a celebration for the 37th anniversary of the birth of Modern Spiritualism which had begun with the Fox sisters in 1848. The event took place from 31 March to 2 April 1885 and includes original spirit drawings by Georgiana Houghton, Houghton, who had died in 1884, created under the guidance of 70 archangels which reflected her faith as a staunch Christian Spiritualist. The subjects of her work, taken as a whole, included The Trinity, The Lord, The Apostles, God, Spirit, Peace, Wisdom, Truth, Love, Salvation, and Unveiling of the Heavens.
• Birmingham born Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones designs windows for St Philip’s Birmingham (now Birmingham Cathedral) beginning in 1885 with The Ascension window and continuing two years later with The Nativity and The Crucifixion. The windows are manufactured by William Morris & Co.
• In July 1886, the Austrian Emperor decorated Anton Bruckner with the Order of Franz Joseph. In addition to his symphonies, Bruckner wrote Masses, motets and other sacred choral works, and a few chamber works, including a string quartet. Bruckner died in Vienna in 1896 at the age of 72. He is buried in the crypt of the monastery church at Sankt Florian, immediately below his favorite organ.
• Paul Claudel experiences a sudden conversion at the age of eighteen on Christmas Day 1886 ‘while listening to a choir sing Vespers in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris: "In an instant, my heart was touched, and I believed." La Vierge à Midi (The Virgin at Noon) is a poem by Claudel inspired by his conversion but with the setting of the poem moved to midday.
• Léon Bloy's first novel, Le Désespéré, published in 1887, is a fierce attack on rationalism and those he believed to be in league with it.
• Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem is first performed in 1888. It is not composed to the memory of a specific person but, in Fauré's words, "for the pleasure of it." Fauré also said of his Requiem, "Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest."
• James Ensor takes on religion, politics, and art with his 1888 scene of Christ entering contemporary Brussels in a Mardi Gras parade. After rejection by Les XX, the artists' association that Ensor had helped to found, the painting is not exhibited publicly until 1929. Christ's Entry Brussels in 1889 is a forerunner of twentieth-century Expressionism.
• From 1888 – 1891, Stanisław Wyspiański starts his career by working together with Józef Mehoffer, under the supervision of Jan Matejko, on St. Mary’s Basilica in Kraków. He also restores late medieval frescos in the choir of Holy Cross Church.
• In an 1888 letter to his close artist friend, Emile Bernard, Vincent Van Gogh confesses to “a longing for the Infinite, of which the sower and the sheaf are the symbols still enchanting me.” In a letter to his brother Theo from the same year, he wrote “When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.“
• In 1888 Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin work together in the village of Pont-Aven experimenting with a new style that emphasized suggestive colour rendered in flat planes surrounded by dark outlines, which came to be known as Synthetism. Bernard painted The Pardon (Breton Women on a Meadow) and Gauguin, Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), both depicting the Catholicism of Breton women.
• In 1888 Paul Sérusier shows the painting now known as The Talisman, made under the guidance of Paul Gauguin at Pont-Aven, to the group of young painters called The Nabis (The Prophets). As well as Sérusier, The Nabis comes to include Maurice Denis, Paul Ransom, and Jan Verkade, all of whom work with spiritual themes.
• Oscar Wilde writes The Happy Prince and Other Tales in 1888. Taught by Walter Pater, his circle includes Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson and John Gray, each of whom joined the Roman Catholic church in either 1890 or 1891.
• During the summer of 1889, Émile Bernard was alone in Le Pouldu and began to paint many religious canvasses. He wrote about symbolism saying it was of a Christian essence, divine language.
• Paul Gauguin's exhibit at Les XX in 1889 is an important early display his works, and adds to the recognition that he had begun to receive in 1888. The exhibition includes the first showing of his Vision after the Sermon, the painting that, in his 1891 article on Gauguin, leads Albert Aurier to identify an 'idealist, even mystical, reaction' to naturalism and claim that Gauguin is the leader of symbolism. 
• Hubert Parry received many commissions which included choral works such as the cantata Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day (1889), the oratorios Judith (1888) and Job (1892), and the psalm-setting De Profundis (1891).
• Gerard Manley Hopkins dies in Dublin in 1889.

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Rhiannon Giddens - Calling Me Home (with Francesco Turrisi).