Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1890s

This is Part 2 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.

The introduction and the remainder of the series can be found at: Introduction, 1880s. 

• Antonín Dvořák composes his Requiem in 1890. Dvořák was deeply religious, and this work reflects his faith and spirituality. The premiere took place on 9 October 1891 in Birmingham, conducted by Dvořák himself.
• In 1890, Emil Bernard is actively involved in organizing the first retrospective for his friend, the recently deceased Vincent Van Gogh with whom he had shared ideas and exchanged paintings. Thereafter he writes a series of articles on fellow artists including Odilon Redon, Paul Cezanne and others.Between 1888 and 1891, Bernard paints numerous compositions based on the Gospels, from The Adoration of the Magi to Agony in the Garden and other scenes from the Passion of Christ. These immediately capture the imagination of Maurice Denis, Paul Sérusier, Paul Ranson and other painters from the Nabis group.
• Oscar Wilde writes The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), De Profundis (1897) and The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898).
• Edward Burne-Jones’ huge watercolour, The Star of Bethlehem, painted for the corporation of Birmingham, was first exhibited in 1891.
• The first modern artist colonies or schools with religious dispositions begin with the Latem School in Belgium and the Nagybánya artists' colony and school in Hungary. Gathering in the 1890’s, the 'First Group' of Latem artists includes the landscape artist Valerius De Saedeleer, George Minne, Albijn Van den Abeele and the Expressionist Gustave van de Woestyne. The Nagybánya artists' colony and school began in 1896 by Simon Hollósy with fellow artists Károly Ferenczy, Béla Iványi-Grünwald, István Réti and János Thorma. It closes in 1937 but has an after-life following the Second World War. The art which radiates from Nagybánya deeply influences Hungarian art of the century.
• The beginnings of Divisionism in Italy from 1891 include artists such as Giovanni Segantini and Gaetano Previati, who paint sacred subjects.
• In 1891 Paul Cézanne turns to Catholicism. He later tells his friend Louis Aurenche in a letter that the one and only subject of his paintings is "the spectacle that Pater Omnipotens Aeterne Deus spreads before our eyes."
• In 1891, Georges Rouault enters the École des Beaux-Arts, the official art school of France, where he studies under Gustave Moreau. When Moreau dies in 1898, Rouault is nominated as curator of the Moreau Museum in Paris.
• Là-bas (1891), En route (1895) and La cathédrale (1898) is a trilogy by Joris-Karl Huysmans that features Durtal, an autobiographical character whose spiritual progress is tracked and who converts to Catholicism. In the novel that follows, L'Oblat (1903), Durtal becomes an oblate in a monastery, as Huysmans is himself in the Benedictine Abbey at Ligugé, near Poitiers, from 1901.
• In 1892, Paul Verlaine publishes Liturgies Intimes, a series of variations on the different moments of the Mass. Verlaine’s ‘Agnus Dei’ is the inspiration for John Gray’s poem ‘The Lamb seeks bitter heath to eat . . .’ in his Spiritual Poems.
• Léon Bloy publishes Sueur de sang (Sweating blood) 1893, Histoires désobligeantes (Disagreeable tales) 1894, and La Femme pauvre (The Woman Who Was Poor) 1897.
• Wilfrid and Alice Meynell are in contact with many Catholic writers during the growing revival. In particular, Wilfrid corresponds with Coventry Patmore, Oscar Wilde, Hilaire Belloc, and Edith Sitwell. Alice’s Poems (1893), including much of the earlier volume of Preludes (1875), brought her work more definitely before the public; and is followed in 1901 by another slender book of delicate verse, Later Poems.
• Alice and Wilfred Meynell arrange for publication of Francis Thompson's first book Poems in 1893. His poem The Hound of Heaven is called by the Bishop of London "one of the most tremendous poems ever written," and by critics "the most wonderful lyric in the language." His subsequent volumes are Sister Songs (1895) and New Poems (1897).
• In 1893, John Gray’s Silverpoints is published by The Bodley Head and contains translations of Théophile Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarmé, as well as poems inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite tradition. Then, in Spiritual Poems, Chiefly Done out of Several Languages, published in 1896, as well as translations from the French, there are also translations of Ambrose of Milan, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas and other mediaeval authors, Spanish mystics of the 16th and 17th centuries (in particular John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila), and texts drawn from Latin liturgy.
• In 1894, the Nabi, Jan Verkade, joins the Beuron monastery as an artist-oblate and works under Desiderius Lenz in the Beuron Art School.
• In 1895, at the age of 25, Józef Mehoffer, from Kraków, wins the international competition for the design stained-glass windows at the Gothic collegiate church of St. Nicholas in Freiburg. The execution of the work for these beautiful Art Nouveau windows continued over the subsequent 40 years.
• In 1895, Stanisław Wyspiański is asked to design the wall paintings of the Franciscan Church in Kraków, which had been damaged in a fire in 1850. Inspired by St. Francis’ love of nature, Wyspiański depicts huge violets, roses and geraniums and abstract snowflakes in geometric patterns. Despite numerous conflicts with the monks over the style, he is next asked in 1897 to design the stained-glass windows of the church. These include the large God the Father: Let it Be, above the western entrance.
• In 1895, Clement Heaton collaborates with the painter Paul Robert on the decoration of the walls around the monumental staircase of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Neuchâtel. Paul Robert did the wall paintings and Heaton took care of the decorative elements around it. After Heaton's name was established, he received many commissions from Swiss churches including Saint-Clément Church in Bex in 1911.
• The Rhymers’ Club poet Lionel Johnson publishes two collections, Poems (1895) and Ireland and Other Poems (1897), that reveal a private faith, based on personal experience, which appears to have been both a source of joy and the cause of a ceaseless internal struggle.

• In a letter he wrote to his parents at Christmas 1896, Henry Ossawa Tanner stated, "I have made up my mind to serve Him [God] more faithfully." Tanner's painting Daniel in the Lions' Den was accepted into the 1896 Salon in Paris. Later that year he painted The Resurrection of Lazarus. The critical praise for this piece solidified Tanner's position in the artistic elite and heralded the future direction of his paintings, which treated mostly biblical themes. Upon seeing The Resurrection of Lazarus, art critic Rodman Wanamaker offered to pay all the expenses for a journey by Tanner to the Middle East. Tanner quickly accepted the offer. Before the next Salon opened, he set forth for the Palestine region of the Levant. Explorations of various mosques and biblical sites, as well as character studies of the local population, allowed him to further his artistic training. His paintings developed a powerful air of mystery and spirituality.
• In 1899 Antoni Gaudí joined the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc (Saint Luke artistic circle), a Catholic artistic society founded in 1893 by the bishop Josep Torras i Bages and the brothers Josep and Joan Llimona.
• One Poor Scruple by Mrs Wilfred Ward is published in 1899. The daughter of upper-class English Roman Catholics, Josephine Mary Hope-Scott publishes eleven volumes of fiction.

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Piers Faccini - Together Forever Everywhere.