Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1920s

This is Part 5 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, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s.

• Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavansdatter (1920 - 1922) and Master of Hestviken (1925 – 1927), Oskar Milosz's Ars Magna (1924) and Les Arcanes (1926), Julien Green's Mont-Cinère (1926), Adrienne Mesurat (1927), and Léviathan (1928), Georges Bernanos’ Under the Star of Satan (1927) and Joy (1928), Francois Mauriac’s Le Desert de l’amour (1925), Thérèse Desqueyroux (1927), and Destins (1928), Dorothy L. Sayers’ first novel Whose Body? (1923), Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (1923), Alfred Noyes’ The Return of the Scare-Crow (1929) are published.
• In 1920, Maire-Alain Couturier begins studying at the Ateliers d'Art Sacré. 
• Art and Scholasticism by Jacques Maritain is published in 1920. It was in thinking of Rouault that Maritain wrote Art and Scholasticism and he also made frequent references to his artist friend in Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (1953).
• In 1920, Louis Barillet meets Jacques Le Chevalier and they begin collaborating on their first stained glass windows founding their own workshop. Jean Hébert-Stevens and Pauline Peugniez do the same in 1923. Barillet and Le Chevalier found L'Arch et les Artisans de l'Autel, (The Arc and the Artisans of the Altar).
• During the 1920s, Bernard Walke, the Vicar of St Hilary’s in Cornwall invites many Newlyn School artists to contribute works to decorate the church and also installs statues and other paintings from other sources. The majority of the new work, including the white crucifix, the pulpit and two relief works on copper is executed by Ernest Procter. Other artists include Dod Procter, Norman Garstin, Alethea Garstin, Harold Knight, Harold Harvey, Roger Fry and Annie Walke. Some of the artifacts and Walke’s Anglo-Catholic practices are highly controversial and result in a Consistory Court and a raid by Protestant activists in 1932. Items are removed, some damaged in the process, but over the succeeding years many are returned.
• In 1920, the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic is formed at Ditchling. David Jones becomes a Roman Catholic in 1921 and joins Eric Gill at Ditchling.
• El Cristo de Velázquez (The Christ of Velázquez) (1920) is a religious work of poetry by Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, divided into four parts, where Unamuno analyzes the figure of Christ from different perspectives. For Unamuno, the art of poetry was a way of expressing spiritual problems. His themes were the same in his poetry as in his fiction: spiritual anguish, the pain provoked by the silence of God, time and death.
In 1921, the poet Pierre Reverdy is baptised into the Catholic faith with Max Jacob as his godfather. Jacob publishes Le laboratoire central before leaving Paris for Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire to live in the town’s historic abbey and in nearby rooms. He attends daily Mass, writes poetry, and paints in gouache. In 1922 Jacob publishes Art poétique.
• In 1921, Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone ask Albert Gleizes to become their teacher.
• In March-April 1922 the statutes of the Maritain’s Thomistic Circles are drawn up with Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange becoming advisor of the circles. Prayer and Intelligence is to be provided by by Jacques and Raïssa. September 30 -- October 4 sees the first retreat of the Thomistic Circles preached by Garrigou-Lagrange at Versailles.
• L’Arche participate in the exhibition of Christian Art in Paris in 1922.
• In 1922, G.K. Chesterton is received into the Roman Catholic Church.
• Alfred Noyes' epic verse trilogy The Torch-Bearers – comprising Watchers of the Sky (1922), The Book of Earth (1925) and The Last Voyage (1930) – is an eloquent exposition of a religious synthesis with the history of science.
• On 5 June 1923 Jacques and Raïssa Maritain move to 10 rue du Parc at Meudon, where they will live until war breaks out in 1940. September 26-30 sees the second retreat of the Thomistic Circles at Meudon. These will continue annually until 1940, save for 1936.
• Gino Severini returns to the Roman Catholic Church in 1923, initially through Jacques Maritain.
• In 1923, Maurice Denis, Marie-Alain Couturier, and Marguerite Huré create the first abstract stained-glass windows in the church of Notre Dame du Raincy, built by Auguste Perret.
• Valentine Reyre creates Christ aux outrages for the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Wisques in 1923 and a Virgin of the Apocalypse for the church of the French Village of the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in 1925.
• In 1924, Gino Severini receives his first church commission, wall paintings for the Swiss church of Saint Nicolas de Myre in Semsales. The work is completed between 1924 and 1926.
• After befriending a Russian Orthodox priest, Father Nicholas, following his move to Nice in 1924, Igor Stravinsky reconnects with his faith. He rejoins the Russian Orthodox Church and afterwards remains a committed Christian.
• In 1925 Jean Cocteau meets Père Henrion at Meudon and three days later makes his confession. In January 1926, Cocteau’s Letter to Jacques Maritain is published and, at the same time, Maritain’s Reply to Jean Cocteau. The exchange is published in English as Art and Faith.
• In 1925, Jacques Maritain and the novelist Julien Green meet for the first time. They correspond with one another from 1926 to 1972 with their correspondence being published as The Story of Two Souls in 1979.
• In 1925, the Society of Spiritual Artists is founded in Hungary, with Barna Basilides as a founding member.
• G.K.'s Weekly, a publication by G. K. Chesterton, is founded in 1925 (its pilot edition appearing in late 1924), which continues until his death in 1936. Its articles typically discuss topical cultural, political, and socio-economic issues as well as poems, cartoons, and other such material that pique Chesterton's interest. It contains much of his journalistic work done in the latter part of his life, and extracts from it are published as the book The Outline of Sanity. Among those whose work appears in G. K.'s Weekly are E. C. Bentley, Alfred Noyes, Ezra Pound, George Bernard Shaw, and George Orwell. The publication advocates the philosophy of distributism in contrast to centre-right and centre-left attitudes regarding socialism and industrialism.
• Antoni Gaudi dies in 1926 with the Sagrada Familia uncompleted.
• Together with Dom Paul Bellot, Maurice Stolz constructs the Saint-Crysole church in Comines (North) from 1926-1928.
• In 1926, Stanley Spencer begins work on his commission to fill a new chapel at Burghclere with images of his experiences in the First World War, at home and abroad.
• In 1926, Georges Desvallières paints L’Ascension and O Salutaris Hostia for the Church of Saint John the Baptist in Pawtucket (New England).
• Hugo Ball publishes Byzantinisches Christentum (1923) and Flucht aus der Zeit (1927), his diaries covering the beginnings of Dada and his conversion. He dies of stomach cancer in 1927.
• Bernard Walke’s Christmas story play ‘Bethlehem’ is broadcast from St Hilary’s on Christmas Eve in 1927 and it was the first ever BBC Radio drama to be broadcast from outside the BBC studios.
• In 1927, Albert Gleizes establishes an artists’ commune at Moly Sabata, where he is joined by Robert Pouyaud, François Manevy, César Geoffrey, Mido, and Anne Dangar.
• Alfred Noyes converts to Catholicism in 1927.
• In 1927, Viking Press commissions Aaron Douglas to illustrate the text of James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse.
• From the 1920s through the 1930s, groups such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, who formed in 1928, become popular. Such groups sing, usually unaccompanied, in jubilee style, mixing careful harmonies, melodious singing, playful syncopation and sophisticated arrangements to produce a fresh, experimental style far removed from the more sombre style of hymn-singing.
• In 1928, T.S. Eliot announced to a startled world, and the disapproval of his contemporaries, that his general point of view could be described as ‘classicist in literature, royalist in politics and anglo-catholic in religion.’ The previous year he had been baptised behind closed doors in Finstock Church, near Oxford.
• In 1928, Rot-Blau (Red-Blue) is formed in German-speaking Switzerland, led by Hans Stocker and Otto Staiger. Together, they win the Basel-Stadt art credit competition for the stained-glass windows of the Antonius Church in Basel. Stocker becomes an innovator of church art in Switzerland and creates stained-glass for the Catholic cathedral in Kyōto which is designed by the Swiss architect Karl Freuler.
• In 1928, while attending a church service with his sister-in-law, Thomas A. Dorsey claims the minister who prays over him pulled a live serpent from his throat, prompting his immediate recovery from a two-year long depression. Thereafter, he vows to concentrate all his efforts in gospel music. After the death of a close friend, Dorsey is inspired to write his first religious song with a blues influence, ‘If You See My Savior, Tell Him That You Saw Me’.
• As Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, George Bell commissions a new play from John Masefield which is performed in 1928, an event which, in large part, led to the establishing of a series of Canterbury plays. Bell writes to the cast, ‘We have lighted a torch which nothing can extinguish and have given a witness to the fellowship of Religion and Poetry and Art, which will go on telling in ways far beyond our own imagination.’
• Sigrid Undset is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.
• In 1929, Richard Seewald converts to Catholicism in the Collegio Papio of the Benedictines in Ascona and accepts orders for murals in sacred spaces including the chapel SS. Annunziatain Ronco.
• In his 1929 enthronement address as Bishop of Chichester, George Bell expresses his commitment to a much closer relationship between the Anglican Church and the arts.

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People! - I Love You.

Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1900s

This is Part 3 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, 1890s.

• In 1900 Oscar Wilde dies, following a death-bed conversion. John Ruskin also dies in 1900.
• William Holman Hunt paints a life-sized, version of The Light of the World which he begins in about 1900 and finishes in 1904. Shipowner and social reformer, Charles Booth, purchases the work and it is hung in St Paul's Cathedral, London. It is dedicated there in 1908, following a 1905–1907 world tour, during which the picture drew large crowds.
• In 1900, Charles Péguy starts the Cahiers de la Quinzaine (Fortnightly Notebooks), the journal that he runs until his death and in which most of his work first appears. In 1908, he announces his return to the Catholic faith.
• Arts and Crafts churches built in the UK include the Arts & Crafts Church (Long Street Methodist Church and School) – Manchester, England – 1900 and All Saints' Church, Brockhampton - 1901-1902. 5,000 Arts and Crafts style churches were built or decorated in the UK between 1884 and 1918.
• Paul Bellot becomes an architect in 1900 having studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1902 he becomes a monk of the Benedictines of Solesmes. In 1906, his abbot sends him to Oosterhout, in Holland. It is there that he begins his career as an architect by building the monastery of Oosterhout (1906), which he completes in 1909-1910, then that of Quarr-Abbey in the Isle of Wight (1907-1908) and its sanctuary of Sainte-Marie de Quarr-Abbey (1912-1914), four exceptional works built before the First World War.
• More artist colonies form including at Gödöllő in Hungary from 1901 with Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch and Sándor Nagy, the second 'generation' of the Latem School which includes Albert Servaes who moved to Latem in 1905, and the move by Eric Gill to Ditchling in 1907, to which he is followed by Edward Johnston and Hilary Pepler.
• In 1901, Mikhail Vrubel starts his large canvas Demon Downcast. Exhibited in 1902, the painting overwhelms the audience and wins real fame for the artist. Azrael (1904), though not so famous as the Demon Downcast, is also one of Vrubel’s greatest achievements. In his many variations on the Prophet theme, Vrubel explores the tragedy of the artist who, as he believed, fails to fulfil his mission to “sear the hearts of men with verbs”.
• Charles Albert Tindley begins publishing his songs in 1901, and goes on to publish several hymn collections, including Soul Echoes in 1905 and a series beginning with New Songs Of Paradise! in 1916. He was a noted songwriter and composer of gospel hymns and is recognized as one of the founding fathers of American gospel music. His composition ‘I'll Overcome Someday’ is credited by observers to be the basis for the U.S. Civil Rights anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’. Another of his notable hymns is ‘(Take Your Burden to the Lord and) Leave It There’ (1916). Others are ‘Stand by Me’ (1905) and ‘What Are They Doing in Heaven?’ (1901).
• In 1902, Hilaire Belloc publishes The Path to Rome, an account of a walking pilgrimage from Central France across the Alps to Rome. The Path to Rome contains descriptions of the people and places he encountered, his drawings in pencil and in ink of the route, humour and poesy.
• The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) and The Man who would be Thursday (1908) by G.K. Chesterton are published, also Out of Due Time (1906) and Great Possessions (1909) by Mrs Wilfrid Ward, Hadrian the Seventh (1904) by Frederick Rolfe and Lord of the World (1907) by Robert Hugh Benson.
• Mikhail Nesterov completes commissions for paintings in the Church of Alexander Nevsky in Abastuman, Georgia (1899-1904), and frescoes in Marfo-Mariinsky Cloister in Moscow (1907-11).
• In November 1904 Jacques and Raïssa Maritain marry and begin to read Léon Bloy. In June 1905 they make their first visit to Bloy's home. On visits to Bloy’s home, they also meet Georges Rouault. Then in June 1906 the baptism of Jacques, Raïssa, and her sister Vera takes place in the church of Saint-Jean-l'Evangeliste with Bloy as their godfather.
• In 1905, Georges Rouault exhibits his paintings at the Salon d'Automne with the other Fauvists.
• In 1905, Jan Toorop converts to Catholicism and begins producing primarily religious works.
• In 1905, Paul Sérusier publishes his translation of Desiderius Lenz’s essay The Aesthetic of Beuron (with an introduction by Maurice Denis).
• In 1906, Ruth St. Denis, after studying Hindu art and philosophy, offers a public performance in New York City of her first dance work, Radha (based on the milkmaid Radha who was an early consort of the Hindu god Krishna), together with such shorter pieces as The Cobra and The Incense. Her later productions, many of which had religious themes, include Egypta (1910) and O-mika (1913), a dance drama in a Japanese style. Prompted by a belief that dance should be spiritual, St. Denis brings to American dance a new emphasis on meaning and the communication of ideas by using themes previously considered too philosophical for theatrical dance.
• The Blue Rose artists, who represent the second wave of Symbolist painting in 20th century Russia, exhibit together in 1907. They are strongly influenced by the French Symbolist painters and the Russian Symbolist writers. The spiritualism which has been so frequent a theme in Russian art find a profound outlet in the Blue Rose’s transcendent aspirations. A sense of dread begins to pervade the mystically-themed works of the Blue Rose’s leader, Pavel Kuznetsov, as he begins depicting frustrated hopes and a sense of imminent tragedy.
• In 1908, Antoni Gaudi begins work on the Crypt of the Colònia Güell.
• In 1909, Pierre-Auguste Renoir writes a preface to the reprint of a French translation Cennino Cennini’s Treatise on Painting, an influential book for Renoir. In the preface he writes, ‘to understand the general value of the arts of the past it is necessary to recall that beyond the teachings of their masters the painters had something else, something that has disappeared from modern life, something that filled the soul of the contemporaries of Cennini – a religious faith, the most fecund source of their inspiration.’
• From 1909 until his death in 1956, Emil Nolde paints over fifty pictures with religious subjects. The first twenty-five, painted between 1909 and 1912, have a special place among his works as they include some of his largest and most elaborate paintings, among them a triptych, Legend: Saint Mary of Egypt, and the nine-piece Life of Christ.
• In 1909 Jacques and Raïssa Maritain move to Versailles and the Rouault family follow two years later. There they meet frequently, the Rouaults’ take meals with the Maritains’ on an almost weekly basis and hold long conversations together. They discuss religion, mysticism, social justice, the philosophy of beauty and the practice of art. Rouault finds in Maritain an understanding and sympathetic listener with whom he can escape his solitude, to whom he can speak of himself and of his art before a lively and open intelligence.

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Victoria Williams - A Little Bit Of Love.

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.