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.

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).

Art and faith: Decades of engagement - Introduction

Growing up in the 1970s as a child who was a voracious reader, an aspiring writer, and an attendee at various Baptist, Charismatic, Church of England and Independent churches, I was someone that was actively looking for examples of Christian artists of all stripes, types, genres and styles. They were hard to find.

At the time, I knew about C.S. Lewis and the Inklings and was reading Francis Schaeffer and Hans Rookmaaker. My main sources of information, however, were Buzz Magazine and (in the 80’s) the Greenbelt Festival’s Strait, for which I later started to write. These had a primary focus on music, but I remember discovering, for example, the poetry of John Berryman through an article in Strait.

I’m grateful for all that I was able to encounter and enjoy at that time but, 50 years later, I’m also aware of how much more there was to discover and how few routes to that information seemed available at the time. All creatives need role models, not to slavishly copy, but in order to see how the work that originally inspired other artists was transmuted and changed to create something new. It is that process of transmutation and transformation that inspires and from which learning derives for one’s own creativity.

The internet has greatly increased our ability to search out such examples and role models and this technological development has gone hand in hand with an attitude shift in the Church and the Arts that no longer sees such a separation between the two as was, at an earlier time, commonly perceived to be the case. In the world of the Arts, this has reflected a post-modern focus on over-looked and under-valued stories, while in the Church there has been a breaking down of the distinction between sacred and secular. Inevitably, these shifts have only been partial while still opening up much fruitful ground for research, collaboration and discovery.

I have long felt the need of a listing demonstrating something of the breadth of the engagement that there has been in practice between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. This is because academic research tends towards the specific rather than the big picture. At one stage I had discussions with Pieter Kwant of Piquant Editions about an A-Z that would provide a summary overview, but, more recently, have thought that a decade-by-decade listing might provide a fuller sense of the range and variety of initiatives and approaches that have been in play.

In the posts that will follow in this series, that is what I will seek to provide. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know – I’m still regularly discovering new artists from the past for the first time – 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 idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. I am seeking to provide information that will be a help to any who today feel as I did in the 70’s. In that spirit, I would welcome suggestions for additions or amendments to these listings. I will add to the listings that I post initially as I am able, rather than on a regular and consistent basis. 

When possible, I’ll also aim to provide a list of books and sites that seek to provide overviews of sorts. Much of my writing for Artlyst, ArtWay, and Church Times seeks to highlight aspects of the hidden heritage to which I am seeking to provide an entry point through these listings. Other series of posts on this blog have also sought to share similar information and ideas. To find links and indexes to these series and posts click here.

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The Killers - Running Towards A Place.