In Wonder

Enigma - the Mural over the chancel arch

The Church of St John the Evangelist, Aberdeen

A lecture delivered on Friday the 17th of January 2002 at the launch of St John’s Restoration Project by Dr John Morrison, Senior Lecturer, Department of History of Art, University of Aberdeen

(The lecture notes are published here with no modification parts of it in note form.)

Why is this an enigma?

Who painted it? We don’t know

When was it painted? We don’t know

Why is it painted in this rather peculiar technique?

When I saw this painting for the first time, about a year ago I was told that someone had suggested it been painted at the same time the church was built, that is, 1851.

Well it can’t have been. It’s impossible.

The peculiar technique I mentioned is called ‘Divisionism’ or ‘Pointillism’ and it's invented in Paris in the 1880s. The painting here is not just an amateur attempt at divisionism. It’s the work of a professional painter who is fully versed in the often complex pseudo-scientific laws of colour and light that make up this technique.

It’s so knowing this that if I’d been asked to guess when it could have been painted on a church wall in Aberdeen I’d have said that it was the slightly tongue-in-cheek effort of a very good painter trying out divisionism for fun in say the 1970s. Why it might be tongue-in-cheek we’ll come back to later but my idea of a date in the 70s is apparently not sustainable. The two oldest current members of the congregation here insist that the painting has been there ever since they started attending and that apparently puts its origin back before 1930. So I have to accept that it’s not relatively recent and I need to start looking at a date sometime between say 1890 and 1930.

Before we get onto ideas about who painted it and when, I want to say something about why this isn’t an amateur painting, or someone just mimicking the look of divisionism.

What is divisionism?

Divisionism is a set of principles developed by the French painter Georges Seurat in Paris in the first half of the 1880s.

Based on a number of scientific treatises, particularly work by a man who was interested in colour dyes for thread (Eugene Chevreul) Seurat arrived at a way of painting which involved breaking brushstrokes down into points or sometimes dashes of colour.

He believed

In a theory of optical mixing. That’s the reason that everything is divided into dots or dashes. Basically it says that you get a more intense and accurate sensation of colour if you let the mixing take place in the eye and not on the palette. So if you want to paint something orange you might instead paint it as a mixture of red and yellow touches and allow the eye of the spectator to blend them into orange.

Secondly he believed that the light in the painting affected all the other colours. That the light wasn’t neutral but itself was coloured and that that coloured light had an impact. That impact was seen in the cast shadows of objects.

His understanding of colour said that the cast shadow of an object always contained the complimentary colour of that object.

In its simplest terms you can work out complimentaries by looking at the three primary colours red, yellow and blue.

All other colour are made of a mixture of red, yellow and blue (plus the 2 ‘non’ colours black and white) So if we start with one of the primaries, say red its ‘complimentary’ is the colour we get when we mix the other two primaries together. So the complimentary of red is the mixture of blue and yellow ie green. The complimentary of Yellow is the mixture of blue and red ie purple and the complementary of blue is orange - the mixture of red and yellow. These new colours green, purple and orange are ‘secondaries’ and you can mix them in exactly the same way to produce complimentary colours which are in turn tertiaries and so on.

In Seurat’s divisionist paintings we see complimentary colour in the shadows.

(This is a bit contradictory of the first idea but this isn’t science. It’s not just the rigid application of a set of rules. It’s a set of guidelines which are then filtered through the sensibility of the painter)

The third thing is an idea of contrast. It relates to tone rather than colour. Tone basically is how light or dark a particular colour is rather than different hues. The idea is that a colour is seen at its most vibrant when the colours it is next to are most contrasting with it. So something which is very light in tone should always be set against something which is very dark in tone. This leads to tones of objects changing as they approach one another.

Imagine a boy swimming. You see his pink body very light in tone in the sunlight and the blue water around him. The water is also in the sunlight but when it comes up against his light toned body the artist will paint it darker to maximise the contrast. Similarly the boys body tone will get lighter as it comes up against the darker water.

This is all very complex. It’s not something you can even begin if you don’t have a full understanding of tone and colour. This painting demonstrates all these things very competently.

Subject matter

It depicts elements from the gospel of St John

The central theme of the painting appears to be John's recording of Jesus' statement to Nathaniel

"Hereafter you shall see Heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man"

The angels are seen above. They may be depicted in all their variety, Dominions Virtues, Powers, Thrones, Archangels, Seraphim, Cherubim (heads only) etc

On the lower right and lower left appear to be references to two portions of the book of John.

On the left hand side is the tale of the miraculous draft of fishes.

Less certainly on the right hand side we may see a reference to Christ's command at the Last Supper to the disciples to "feed my sheep" - an injunction to carry on the ministry and to spread the gospel.

What is so odd about this is the technique through which these elements are depicted.

Look at Dots and Dashes
Look at Complimentary colour in the shadows
Look at contrasts of tone
So. This is real divisionism. It is a very competent application of a very complex set of principles.

It’s also a very odd technique to chose for a spiritual subject. What we have here are scenes from the life of St John including the tale of the miraculous draft of fishes. The episodes, as you would expect, are full of miraculous happenings. This is not an everyday common life type of subject. Now that makes divisionism an odd technique to chose.

Divisionism aspires to be scientific and rational. It tries to make the world a more easily understood logical place. The subjects usually chosen by divisionist artists are almost relentlessly ordinary and sometimes politically motivated.

Factory workers on a lunchbreak
A march for jobs
Or simply very straight paintings of landscape.

They don’t tend to be spiritual or religious at all. Indeed spiritual and religious painting is the antithesis of divisionism in many ways. Using it here is very strange.

In particular divisionism often concerned light. It attempted to paint what light does to objects. Here we have a painting full of light but its not real, rational ordinary light. It’s the light of the Lord, its spiritual light treated as hard scientific fact. Strange and that’s why I suggested that my first guess was a post-war painter operating slightly tongue-in-cheek.

You can imagine
Persuaded to do it
Thought he’d try something a bit different for his own enjoyment
Inverted the idea of the scientific analysis of light and applied it to spiritual light.
But I’m told that’s impossible. It must be before 1930.
So if it’s not a painter trying out a different technique in say the 70s when was it painted?

In the Vestry records dated February 14 1851 there is a transcript of a letter received from Alexander, Bishop of Brechin (Alexander Forbes) and Dr George Ogilvie MD a member of the congregation of St John's. The letter says that their late sister Katherine, who joined a religious order in St Pancras in London had left £100 for what she called "the beautifying of the chancel arch"

But as we've seen this painting cannot date from before 1890 so this can't be a reference to it.

Similarly there's a reference from 1853 to a debt of £150 owed to the Town and County Bank. The money had been borrowed to pay what was called 'the decoration expenses' of the Chancel but again this is far too early.

It does show however that over a number of years there was serious interest and significant sums of money being spent on this particular bit of the church

In 1902 there is another reference to decorating the church.

On 13 November Mr Whyte and Mr Latto of the congregation offered to clean and paint the interior and also to produce coloured designs for the decoration of the church. Mr Whyte, who's designs it is recorded were 'much admired', had the lowest bid (£139.10/2) therefore his quote was accepted.

I have no idea who Mr Whyte is but he appears to have been a painter and decorator. As I've said this is no amateur effort. Even though it is in the right time period it just can't be the work of an unheralded Aberdeen house painter.

Also in 1902 the Church got electric light at a cost of £61 15/-.

By 1904 this lighting was defective and investigations began regarding its replacement.

After much debate in November 1907 the vestry committee asked a plumber, one William Robertson, to replace the old lights and to put lights into the roof of the nave "to light up the painting upon the arch".

That tells us that some painting was in place by 1907 and since there is no later reference to any other painting on the arch it suggests that the work we now see is what is referred to.

But if it is from then, then to find it in Aberdeen really is astonishing. It’s a very modern very controversial technique and if you were to convince me that it really does date from 1907 then I’d want to see some documentary evidence to support the idea. A bill from the painter, an entry in the church accounts, a mention in the press - anything.

Putting that aside for the moment and accepting that it is from 1907
Who could have painted it?
John Mitchell -member of the congregation but no - why not?
Ninian Comper -- connections to church but no - why not?
However:-
AAS’s very good contacts with London
Selling works in 1900 for £1000
Links to Carnegie International in Pittsburgh

But even so Post-Impressionism of which divisionism is one element is unknown in Britain really until Roger Fry’s exhibitions in 1910 and 1912. Not unknown amongst painters but unknown by the public and this is a public work of art. That makes persuading something like a church to accept this very modern technique before 1910 is extraordinary. Why would it happen?

So if I’ve to stick my neck out where do I think it came from?

Visually it is most like the painting of the Belgian Theo van Rysselberghe but he is a major European name and I think if he’d been in Aberdeen it would be known about. It could be a follower or an assistant of his however and given van Rysselberghe’s status as a major European artist that might just have been enough to persuade a church committee to commission such a painting.

My best guess at the moment is that it is a Scottish painting, probably by one of the Glasgow Boys.

Glasgow Boys and Aberdeen at a time when they were rejected in Edinburgh.
GB’s and Les XX in Belgium
GB’s in Munich

This makes links with avant-garde European painters and opens up the possibility of someone who knows the work of divisionist painters appearing in Aberdeen.

All this is pure speculation and I’ve no evidence at all. Like I say it’s an enigma, and a fascinating and very beautiful one.