FRANCIS HOYLAND, now 94 years old, has had a long, varied, and interesting career as painter, printmaker, teacher, writer, and art critic. What has been a constant for him throughout that time has been the creation of images from the life of Christ, often in series. He continues to work on such images daily after attending mass at his Roman Catholic parish church.
That focus to his work dates back to a travelling scholarship to Italy when he was young — he celebrated his 21st birthday in Assisi — which transformed his life and work. The trip came when he was teetering on the edge of faith and assisted him on his faith journey, while also leading to his rethinking his whole language of creating enabling him to paint from the imagination as well as from life. Now he uses the Ignatian method of meditation to image scenes from the life of Christ while using the ratios of the Golden Section to create a unified image in which each brush stroke relates to the one which came before.
In Italy, he was particularly influenced by the predella pictures that he saw, where the story of Christ’s life was told in a series of panels, Giotto being the supreme storyteller. His images at Chappel Galleries are laid out in a similar fashion in continuous double rows. One of the particular pleasures of this exhibition is to sit in the Galleries’ spaces, surrounded by the scenes of Christ’s life, and sense aesthetic, emotional and theological connections between the scenes and images. One overriding impression, despite there being a mix of peaceful and animated scenes, is of the drama inherent to Christ’s life as recounted in the Gospels — a sense captured here by the vigour of Hoyland’s mark-making and the intensity of his colour choices.
Another fascination in an exhibition that depicts so many scenes from the life of Christ is that it enables reflection on scenes that are very familiar, having been depicted previously by many other artists, in terms of key differences in the way in which Hoyland approaches these scenes. Then, too, there is the extent to which he has painted scenes that are rarely depicted and, therefore, possess the freshness of unfamiliarity. He has said that his meditative method means that he always begins afresh when working on scenes that he has painted before. Although elements of influential paintings do sometimes appear as he works on an image, generally these are adapted or changed to fit the specifics of the image emerging on his canvas or board.
Photo Douglas AtfieldPhoto Douglas Atfield
His painting The Eucharist is one of the more familiar scenes. His image is set in a darkened room with a light source immediately above Jesus lighting the central table and its sitters. Both the light and dark in the scene emanate from the central Christ-figure through the directional flow of the brush marks, while the heads and bodies of all the disciples are gently inclined toward their Lord and teacher. This is a particularly reverent image, painted, nevertheless, with great energy and connecting through the chalice and broken bread with our regular re-enactment of the scene.
Hoyland will sometimes incorporate contemporary references into his images: the disciples on the road to Emmaus, for example, are walking dogs on leads. Animals appear in many of the images, most fully in The Temptation, in which Christ is supported in the wilderness by a group of varied creatures. Before Abraham was . . . is a title where you wonder how the scene might be depicted. Hoyland has gone with the moment when Christ walks through the midst of those taking up stones to throw at him.
Hoyland is particularly effective at identifying the spiritual, emotional, and dramatic hub of a scene. This is especially so in some of the scenes that are rarely depicted. The Discourse on Humility is a beautiful scene centred on a child standing on Christ’s lap, surrounded by the backs of tall adults looking down. The challenge of Christ’s words is instantly apparent. Christ foretells the Destruction of Jerusalem is a beautiful scene with the Temple enveloped in a haze of orange sunlight, with long shadows cast by Jesus and his disciples as they look down on the scene. The beautiful haze is, of course, the result of the sun setting on the Temple.
Christ is, as one would expect, central to most of the scenes and images, but, occasionally, great power is found in minimising him or setting him to the side. In The Agony in the Garden, Christ is in the distance praying, and our focus is on the sleeping disciples, while, in St Peter’s Denial, Christ is glimpsed through a window in the far distance. Our response to these scenes, as with that of the disciples, is always in view in these powerful, compelling images.
“The Life of Christ: Eighty Seven Oil Paintings by Francis Hoyland” is in Chappel Galleries, 15 Colchester Road, Chappel, Colchester, Essex CO6 2DE, until 27 April (not open every day: check before travelling). Phone 01206 240326. www.chappelgalleries.co.uk
