Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (Britain and the World) 3030412601, 9783030412609

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Britain’s Vision of the Holy Land
Eschatology and Empire
The Holy Land in the British Imagination
The Intellectual Context
A Photographer’s Theology
The Artists and the ‘Orient’
British Religion
Influences of Visual Culture and Religious Literature
Biblical Archaeology and Sacred Geography
Political Imperatives
Visiting Palestine
Chapter 3: Holy Land and British Perceptions
Roberts’s Holy Land
Protestant Worship and the Holy Land
Roberts’s Contribution to the Understanding of the Holy Land
The Rise of Archaeology
Images of the Holy Land
Diversity in the Churches
British Christian View of Jews
Being Present in the Holy Land
Christian Diversity in Jerusalem
Roberts as Artist and Holy Land Traveller
Roberts’s ‘Grand Tour’
The Politics of the Region
The Imperative for Roberts
Roberts’s Intention
Chapter 4: David Roberts: The Biblical Landscape
The Aesthetic Rendering of Place and Time
The Significance of Dress
Contemporary Arab Life
The Importance of Architecture for Roberts
Roberts’s Contradictory Views on Islam
Antiquities and Photographic Images
British Imperial Influence for Travellers
The Commentary on Roberts’s Lithographs
Chapter 5: David Roberts: Experience of Place
Commentator Versus Artist
Roberts as Commentator
Roberts with Arabs and Monks
Roberts’s Experience of Jerusalem and Its Surrounds
The Jewish Holy Land
Perspectives of Aesthetics
Farewelling the East
The ‘Treasure’ of His Journal and Sketches
The Influence of Roberts’s Lithographs
Chapter 6: David Wilkie: Bible Stories in Context
Wilkie’s ‘Scripture Painting’
A Man of Faith
Cultural Politics
Wilkie the Established Painter
Presbyterian and Catholic Teaching
Scripture, Criticism and ‘Sacred Geography’
Origins of Wilkie’s ‘Scripture Painting’
Politics and Visual Rhetoric
The Patriotic Traveller
Imperialist Intentions?
Socio-cultural Observations
Wilkie’s Iconographic Intention
Historical Accuracy and Contemporary Reality
Wilkie as Interpreter of the Holy Land
Chapter 7: William Holman Hunt: Archaeology, Theology and Biblical Typology
Archaeology and the Search for Truth
Hunt’s Views on Religion and Science
New Challenges to Religious Thinking
Imperial Interest in the Near East
Typological Symbolism
Hunt’s First Religious Painting
Truth of Nature and Truth of Spirit
Hunt and Christianity
Theological Debates in the Church of England
Chapter 8: William Holman Hunt: Faith Experience and New Images
Conscience and Light
Hunt’s View of Arabs and Jews
Hunt in Jerusalem
Hunt’s Work Displayed to the Public
Hunt’s Portrayal of Sacrificial Suffering
Symbolism and Hunt’s Conceptual Complexities
Acclaim and Criticism
Hunt’s Response
Chapter 9: Conclusion
Conceptual Frameworks
New Religious Imagery
Appendix
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index

Citation preview

BRITAIN AND THE WORLD

Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century Amanda M. Burritt

Britain and the World

Series Editors Martin Farr School of History Newcastle University Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK Michelle D. Brock Department of History Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA, USA Eric G. E. Zuelow Department of History University of New England Biddeford, ME, USA

Britain and the World is a series of books on ‘British world’ history. The editors invite book proposals from historians of all ranks on the ways in which Britain has interacted with other societies from the sixteenth century to the present. The series is sponsored by the Britain and the World society. Britain and the Worldis made up of people from around the world who share a common interest in Britain, its history, and its impact on the wider world. The society serves to link the various intellectual communities around the world that study Britain and its international influence from the seventeenth century to the present. It explores the impact of Britain on the world through this book series, an annual conference, and the Britain and the World peer-reviewed journal. Martin Farr ([email protected]) is General Series Editor for the Britain and the World book series. Michelle D. Brock (brockm@wlu. edu) is Series Editor for titles focusing on the pre-1800 period and Eric G. E. Zuelow ([email protected]) is Series Editor for titles covering the post-1800 period. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14795

Amanda M. Burritt

Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century

Amanda M. Burritt Graduate School of Education University of Melbourne Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Britain and the World ISBN 978-3-030-41260-9    ISBN 978-3-030-41261-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41261-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: jozef sedmak / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated To Jennifer Joan Baldwin and Marie Louise Burritt

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Britain’s Vision of the Holy Land 13 Eschatology and Empire  13 The Holy Land in the British Imagination  15 The Intellectual Context  17 A Photographer’s Theology  20 The Artists and the ‘Orient’  25 British Religion  27 Influences of Visual Culture and Religious Literature  34 Biblical Archaeology and Sacred Geography  37 Political Imperatives  39 Visiting Palestine  40 3 Holy Land and British Perceptions 45 Roberts’s Holy Land  47 Protestant Worship and the Holy Land  48 Roberts’s Contribution to the Understanding of the Holy Land  52 The Rise of Archaeology  53 Images of the Holy Land  54 Diversity in the Churches  55 British Christian View of Jews  57 Being Present in the Holy Land  58 Christian Diversity in Jerusalem  60 vii

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Roberts as Artist and Holy Land Traveller  61 Roberts’s ‘Grand Tour’  62 The Politics of the Region  63 The Imperative for Roberts  65 Roberts’s Intention  66 4 David Roberts: The Biblical Landscape 69 The Aesthetic Rendering of Place and Time  71 The Significance of Dress  73 Contemporary Arab Life  76 The Importance of Architecture for Roberts  78 Roberts’s Contradictory Views on Islam  79 Antiquities and Photographic Images  82 British Imperial Influence for Travellers  84 The Commentary on Roberts’s Lithographs  86 5 David Roberts: Experience of Place 89 Commentator Versus Artist  93 Roberts as Commentator  95 Roberts with Arabs and Monks  97 Roberts’s Experience of Jerusalem and Its Surrounds  98 The Jewish Holy Land 102 Perspectives of Aesthetics 104 Farewelling the East 105 The ‘Treasure’ of His Journal and Sketches 106 The Influence of Roberts’s Lithographs 108 6 David Wilkie: Bible Stories in Context113 Wilkie’s ‘Scripture Painting’ 113 A Man of Faith 117 Cultural Politics 119 Wilkie the Established Painter 120 Presbyterian and Catholic Teaching 122 Scripture, Criticism and ‘Sacred Geography’ 124 Origins of Wilkie’s ‘Scripture Painting’ 126 Politics and Visual Rhetoric 131 The Patriotic Traveller 134 Imperialist Intentions? 136

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Socio-cultural Observations 138 Wilkie’s Iconographic Intention 139 Historical Accuracy and Contemporary Reality 143 Wilkie as Interpreter of the Holy Land 146 7 William Holman Hunt: Archaeology, Theology and Biblical Typology149 Archaeology and the Search for Truth 152 Hunt’s Views on Religion and Science 155 New Challenges to Religious Thinking 158 Imperial Interest in the Near East 159 Typological Symbolism 164 Hunt’s First Religious Painting 165 Truth of Nature and Truth of Spirit 167 Hunt and Christianity 169 Theological Debates in the Church of England 172 8 William Holman Hunt: Faith Experience and New Images175 Conscience and Light 175 Hunt’s View of Arabs and Jews 177 Hunt in Jerusalem 179 Hunt’s Work Displayed to the Public 181 Hunt’s Portrayal of Sacrificial Suffering 183 Symbolism and Hunt’s Conceptual Complexities 187 Acclaim and Criticism 191 Hunt’s Response 194 9 Conclusion203 Conceptual Frameworks 205 New Religious Imagery 206 Appendix211 Bibliography225 Index237

List of Figures

Fig. A.1 Fig. A.2 Fig. A.3 Fig. A.4 Fig. A.5 Fig. A.6 Fig. A.7 Fig. A.8 Fig. A.9 Fig. A.10 Fig. A.11

William Holman Hunt, Light of the World, 1851–53, oil on canvas over panel, Keble College Chapel, Oxford 213 David Roberts, The Approach of the Simoon, From Egypt and Nubia (London: F.G. Moon, 1846–49). Library of Congress, Washington, DC 214 William Holman Hunt, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, 1854–60, oil on canvas, Birmingham Museum and Art 214 William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death, oil on canvas, 1870–73, Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester 215 David Roberts, Departure of the Israelites, 1829, oil on canvas, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham 216 David Wilkie, His Highness Muhemed Ali, Pacha of Egypt, 1841, oil paint on board, Tate Britain, London 217 David Roberts, Edinburgh from Calton Hill, 1858, oil on canvas, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 218 David Roberts, artist, Arabs of the Tribe of the Benisaid Feby 17th 1839, Louis Haghe, lithographer, Library of Congress, Washington, DC 219 David Wilkie, The Preaching of Knox Before the Lords of the Congregation, 10th June 1559, 1831–32, oil on panel, Tate Britain, London 220 William Holman Hunt, The Scapegoat, 1854–56, oil on canvas, Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight (National Museums Liverpool)220 William Holman Hunt, The Light of the World, c. 1900–04, oil on canvas, St Paul’s Cathedral, London 221

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List of Figures

Fig. A.12 Fig. A.13

William Holman Hunt, The Importunate Neighbour, 1895, oil on canvas 36.4 × 51.7 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne222 William Holman Hunt, Awakening Conscience, 1853–54, oil on canvas, Tate Britain, London 223

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

When the English Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt was travelling in Egypt in 1854 he was encouraged to grow a beard. With full imperial bluster he wrote to fellow Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais, ‘I should not do so … if I found it disguised my nationality, for that is worth every other pretension one travels with; it finds one in cringing obedience and fear from every native, even a dog when told one is an Englishman runs away yelping. With this nationality, indeed, and a fist I would undertake to knock down any two Arabs in the Usbeykia and walk away unmolested.’1 In fact the reality of Hunt’s interactions with the Near East and those of his compatriots was far more complex and nuanced than this arrogant assertion suggests and he did, eventually, grow a beard! British engagement with the region of the Near East in the nineteenth century was multi-faceted and part of its complexity is exemplified in the powerful relationship between developing and diverse Protestant theologies, visual culture and imperial identity. Britain’s Holy Land was visualised through pictorial representation, internal conception and metaphysical vision. As we explore we will see that this Holy Land of the mind is manifested in the visual expressions of biblical land, biblical history and biblical typology.

1  William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Vol. I, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1905), p. 381.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. M. Burritt, Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41261-6_1

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Throughout the nineteenth century there was a demonstrable interrelationship between the complex milieu of British religious belief and practice, the ideology and exercise of British exploration, commerce, politics and archaeology in the Near East and the visual expression of these interests. Most significantly, underpinning this dynamic, the Holy Land, with Jerusalem at its heart, was viewed in multiple ways: as a region of both physical and spiritual geography, a timeless and metaphorical place, quintessentially ‘other’, yet historical home of the Christian faith. It was viewed as the inheritance of Britain and the place of eschatological promise, a place of ethnographic interest and commercial and political importance.2 This multilayered, sometimes ambiguous and seemingly contradictory engagement was the thread linking all the strands of nineteenth-century British interaction with the land they called holy. This is not an art history book but the British artists David Roberts, David Wilkie and William Holman Hunt make excellent case studies through which to explore Britain’s relationship to the Holy Land because each professed a Protestant faith, each travelled to the area and each wrote about their journeys and beliefs, as well as depicted the region and its peoples through a British Christian lens. Their artworks and writings enable an examination of engagement with the Holy Land from the 1830s to the 1890s. Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt reacted to their changing social and intellectual contexts and subsequently their work influenced British visual and religious culture, as well as being shaped by it. Living, travelling and painting at different times within this period, Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt produced artworks that differed vastly in technique, style and specific subject matter, although all three were inspired by journeys through the same places. In the nineteenth century, a British Protestant religious art evolved which grew from both reclamation of the physical Holy Land and the privileging of personal experience. Broad generalisations are frequently made about the nature of Protestant religious art in the nineteenth century, but to really understand such work it is crucial to acknowledge significant differences in artists’ 2  Eitan Bar-Yosef, The Holy Land in English Culture 1799–1917: Palestine and the question of Orientalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 17. Throughout the nineteenth century the terms ‘Holy Land’, ‘Palestine’ and ‘Syria’ were often used interchangeably in the West. Palestine usually referred to the southern region covering present-day Israel, the Israeli-occupied territories and parts of Jordan. Syria referred to the northern areas covering parts of modern Lebanon, Syria and northern Israel. ‘Holy Land’ was less geographically specific and referred to lands associated with the Bible.

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beliefs and attitudes to faith considered through the lens of shifting theological thinking at the time. Artists who worked in the Holy Land had their own understandings of religion and the Bible, often reflecting and illuminating significant theological differences in the Established and Dissenting churches. The writing and artworks of Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt clearly show that while each artist was inspired by the Bible, Roberts focused on the landscape of ‘sacred geography’, Wilkie sought to depict Biblical narratives in ‘authentic’ historical settings and Hunt developed sophisticated typological symbolism in his work. Their work provoked critical and popular response, leading to further engagement with contemporary issues around both Christology and the significance of the Holy Land for Britain. Through close reading of visual and textual sources, it is evident that a more nuanced interpretation of their differing theological understandings than is often suggested is necessary to truly appreciate the intention behind the artworks they produced as a result of their Holy Land travels. Key to this understanding is the argument that a new Protestant visual rhetoric developed based on personal experience of the Holy Land. Religious thinking evolved in nineteenth-century Britain as the physical landscape of the Holy Land was rediscovered. The life contexts, letters, journals and visual evidence of Wilkie, Roberts and Hunt suggest sincere religious motivation in their various attempts to depict the Palestine of their day as the land of the Bible. The nineteenth-­ century developments of High, Broad and Low Church Anglican theologies and Dissenting Protestant positions, and the influences of these perspectives on belief and worship, are fundamental to a deep understanding of much painting produced at the time. The importance, or otherwise, of personal faith and belief as necessary for the sincerity of religious art was considered a very real issue during this period. To engage with the Bible meaningfully in this intellectual and cultural environment, Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt sought to put themselves literally in the places where, according to Christian scripture, Jesus had walked. Their resulting paintings allowed the viewer in Britain to see from this sacred perspective too. For many Victorian Protestants this approach allowed them to view Palestine as the ‘Holy Land’ without being required to accept the traditional identification of shrines and other places historically associated with pilgrimage, ritual and relics, things which were, for them, most definitely part of Roman Catholic and Orthodox belief and practice. To view a painting of a hill, a town or a river which Jesus also had

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seen allowed an imagined immediacy unmediated by ecclesiastical and clerical intervention. As we will see in subsequent chapters, many paintings reflected this complex thinking. Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt lived and worked in interrelated and interdependent religious, cultural, political and scientific contexts both in Britain and whilst journeying in the physical and cultural environment of the Near East. Roberts and Wilkie were both brought up in the religious, intellectual and political environment and values of Scottish Presbyterianism. Based on an analysis of his own writing, it is evident that Roberts was motivated by both a fascination for the Bible lands and a keen sense of the economic and professional opportunities they could provide an artist. In exploring these ideas, published and edited letters and journals are crucial sources but they need to be used with an awareness of the challenges they can provide in attempting to seek veracity and to avoid overly selective use of available material. Much traditional history writing has focussed on the significant deeds of powerful people, usually men, ‘a view from above’.3 In exploring nineteenth-century Britain’s developing relationship with the lands of the Bible, it is important to consider the implications of decisions, actions and views of significant influential individuals but in the context of the developing engagement of ‘ordinary’ people with the Holy Land, ‘a view from below’. Such impacts are evident when a variety of primary and secondary, textual and visual sources are investigated from a range of perspectives. When analysing artworks the rhetorical devices used in ‘visual persuasion’ need to be evaluated, taking into consideration the perspective of both artists and observers.4 It is necessary to understand the combination of context, situation, intention and perspective when gauging the primary purpose of an artwork.5 We need to ask whether the purpose of the work is more than the visual aesthetic. The anthropologist Geertz defines culture as ‘an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their 3  Peter Burke, ‘Overture. The New History: Its Past and its Future’, in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. by Peter Burke, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), p. 4. 4  Caroline Van Eck, Classical rhetoric and the visual arts in early modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 1. 5  Michael Baxandall, Patterns of intention: on the historical explanation of pictures (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985)

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knowledge about and attitudes towards life.’6 This definition is extremely useful when considering the creation and reception of the complex relationship between visual symbolism and theological concepts in nineteenth-­ century Britain. The idea of learned cultural specificity seems particularly relevant to nineteenth-century British interaction with the Near East. Rhetoric, including the visual, is contextualised through particular individual and national experiences and values which lead to specific ‘ways of seeing’.7 Visual images can powerfully shape how we perceive others and what we think we know about them. Historical images can communicate important information to us today, including information about attitudes, behaviours and values.8 In order to draw reasonable conclusions from specific sources it is imperative to engage with the complexity and multiplicity of small details.9 To avoid the trap of anachronistic interpretation and the attribution of twenty-first-century values and ideas to nineteenth-century artists, in the analysis of artwork, journals and letters, we need to take into account the importance of Baxandall’s notion of the ‘period eye’. By this he means recognition that certain ways of seeing, perceiving and recording are socially, culturally and historically contextualised and involve specific understandings evident to those within such contexts. Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt interpreted their experiences through the cognitive frameworks that their culture and society had taught them; hence their interpretations of the sights they saw in the Holy Land drew on their pre-existing, and culturally specific, knowledge and values.10 On the basis of their artworks, journals, letters and Hunt’s memoir it can be argued that none of the three artists had an overtly political agenda but that each was motivated by a mixture of personal religious beliefs, desire for new experiences, artistic ambition and, to varying degrees, an astute awareness of the commercial market in Britain for visual images of the Holy Land. 6  Clifford Geertz, The interpretation of cultures: selected essays by Clifford Geertz (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 89. 7  Lester C. Olson, Cara A. Finnegan, and Diane S. Hope, eds, Visual rhetoric: A reader in communication and American culture (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2008), p. xvii. 8  Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: the use of images as historical evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 184. 9  Geertz, p. 28. 10  Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 40.

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It is also necessary to guard against the type of circular argument in visual interpretation which can occur when attempts are made to use artworks as evidence of particular ideological positions.11 We must avoid interpreting a painting, Hunt’s The Light of the World (Appendix Fig. A.1), for instance, as reflecting a particular religious view and then using the painting as evidence of that view. Likewise, the application of source criticism aids in the incorporation of Geertz’s notion of ‘thick description’ to ensure consideration of multiple perspectives.12 Corroboration of evidence and consideration of the conventions of certain genres or text types, such as letter writing and journal writing, help us to engage with the period from the ‘inside’. Later in this volume a close examination of selected artworks by Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt will be undertaken, as well as an analysis of relevant sections of their own writing: Hunt’s memoir, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1905), The Life of Sir David Wilkie with his Journals, Tours, and Critical Remarks on Works of Art; and a Selection from his Correspondence compiled by Allan Cunningham (1843), The Life of David Roberts, R.A. (1866) compiled from Roberts’s Journal and other sources by his friend James Ballantine and, From an Antique Land: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land by David Roberts, edited by Barbara Culliford (1989). Throughout this book there is extensive use of direct quotations from the writings of Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt as, like the artworks, they are the primary source of evidence on which my analysis and argument draws. Care is taken in the use of ellipses to ensure the intention of the writer is maintained. When analysing the above-mentioned sources it is fundamentally important to be aware of the ways in which such personal writing, or ‘ego documents’ as Burke calls them, embody ‘rhetoric of identity’. Letters are written according to conventions of the time, the social position of the writer and their social and personal relationship to the intended recipient.13 This is particularly evident, for example, when we compare the tone, language and content of the letters written by Roberts to his teenaged daughter with those he writes to British officials or fellow artists. A close analysis will also show us that both Roberts and Hunt portrayed t­ hemselves 11  Peter Burke, What is cultural history? 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), pp. 13, 23. 12  Geertz, p. 14. 13  Burke, What is cultural history?, p. 91.

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in particular ways depending on whether they were writing in their personal diaries or in more public texts. In the preparatory note to The Life of David Roberts, R.A., Ballantine commented that Roberts had left ‘an invaluable manuscript volume’ containing pen-and-ink sketches of almost all his pictures. Roberts wrote that he had recorded aspects of his artistic career for his daughter Christine and his grandchildren but that Christine and her husband might like to publish some of the material which might be ‘useful to young artists who may be similarly situated with me’.14 Ballantine explained that he had been given this material, as well as other memoranda, journals and letters and he believed they would be ‘instructive and interesting to all who can appreciate sterling worth and genius’.15 It is for this reason that most of the material in the publication is in Roberts’s own words. There is, however, a potentially problematic aspect to some of the above-mentioned written sources. Importantly, Culliford uses Roberts’s original Journal which was transcribed by the artist’s daughter,16 whilst Ballantine abbreviated some of Roberts’s original writing.17 With Wilkie too, sources, even at the time of publication, were questioned. Cunningham’s editorial process in producing The Life of Sir David Wilkie was challenged by a critique in The Quarterly Review of September 1843 but the value of Wilkie’s unedited writing was endorsed. The critic wrote: It would not be fair to subject this book to strict criticism; for it was begun after Mr. Cunningham’s health had been shaken, and the closing page was written the very night before he died, and it is obvious that not one chapter had undergone that ultimate revision in the course of which repetitions may be expected to disappear, hasty thoughts to be suppressed, and vague roundabout paragraphs replaced by clear and complete sentences. … By far the most important part of his materials, however—Wilkie’s own letters— required no editor … they fill a large share of these bulky volumes; and if they had been published by themselves … they would have been sufficient to form a valuable work. … Sir David’s diaries, too, would probably … have

14  David Roberts in David Roberts, the Life of David Roberts, R.A., ed. by James Ballantine, (Milton Keynes, UK: Lightning Source UK, 2013), p. 53. 15  Ballantine in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 53. 16  David Roberts, From an antique land: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land, ed. by Barbara Culliford (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), p. 13 17  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 8.

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remained much as we see them—though the extracts might have been greatly abridged without loss of interest.18

This critique focuses on the value of Wilkie’s own writing, independent of an editor. The artist’s letters provide invaluable insights into his thinking, and his diaries, though sometimes rather verbose, illuminate his motivations, as well as recording his actions. Hunt’s 1905 Memoir must also be considered within a specific context. In analysing the differences between Hunt’s Journals written while first in the Near East and this much later publication, one cannot simply interpret the former as a completely truthful account and the latter as a ‘fabrication’. The Journals are a selective record of events and thoughts, and comparing them with the Memoir highlights the differences between private writing and writing for a public audience. Importantly, too, there was a significant age difference, and hence different experiences and attitudes, between the Hunt of the Journals and the Hunt of the Memoir.19 Both texts are valuable in relation to the information they provide about the thoughts of the artist at particular times and in relation to his intended reader. In his writing, as well as visually, Hunt presents quite specific self-­ images and this interestingly aligns with Burke’s observation that autobiographies consider ‘conventions or rules for self-presentation in a given culture, the perception of the self in terms of certain roles.’20 The choices of language and vocabulary in autobiographical writing also function as a way of creating a particular identity for the author as well as being a vehicle for self-expression.21 Hunt’s Journals certainly create a particular sense of the man and the artist but they also reflect his awareness of the conventions of nineteenth-century travel writing.22 The issues of the authoritative voice can be challenging in reading memoirs as, of course, different people will remember the same event differently. We also need to be mindful that memoirs and paintings are not objective records but reflect priorities, passions and ideological positions 18  John Gibson Lockhart, ‘Review of the Life of Sir David Wilkie R.A.’, The Quarterly Review 72 (September 1843), 397–452 (pp. 397–398). 19  Marcia Pointon, ‘The artist as ethnographer: Holman Hunt and the Holy Land’, In PreRaphaelites Re-viewed, ed. by Marcia Pointon (Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press, 1989), pp. 22–43 (p. 23). 20  Burke, What is cultural history?, p. 91. 21  Burke, What is cultural history?, p. 95. 22  Pointon, p. 23.

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of their creators.23 Throughout this volume, underpinning the analysis and argument, will always be the question of what the purpose of the written or visual text was and recognition of the audience to whom it was intended the information or ideas be communicated. At this point an overview of the volume will provide the reader with a sense of scope, structure and direction. To contextualise the case studies and broader geopolitical issues Chap. 2 explains the multiple perspectives by which the Holy Land was understood and imagined as a geographical region and as an eschatological promise for Christians. The chapter introduces key themes relevant to nineteenth-century British engagement with the Near East, including theological, archaeological, scientific, artistic and political considerations. The chapter then introduces the artists David Roberts, Sir David Wilkie and William Holman Hunt. The fundamental position underpinning the arguments in this volume is that the nineteenth-­ century Near East was complex, nuanced and embodying a range of beliefs, values and practices and that this can also be said of Western engagement in the region. In art historical scholarship the work and lives of nineteenth-century British artists in the Near East are often viewed through the lens of Orientalism. While this is not the conceptual framework employed as a methodology in this volume, Edward Said’s explanations are illuminating. In his seminal book Orientalism Said defines the concept thus, ‘Orientalism can be discussed and analysed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorising views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.’24 In his later paper Orientalism reconsidered, Said identified the most important issues addressed in Orientalism as ‘the representation of other cultures, societies, histories; the relationship between power and knowledge; the role of the intellectual; the methodological questions that have to do with the relationships between different kinds of texts, between text and context, between text and history.’25 Clearly, beyond the discourse of Orientalism, these considerations are fundamental to socio-historical analysis of any literary or visual text.

 Burke, What is cultural history?, p. 21.  Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London, Penguin Books, 2003), p. 3. 25  Edward W. Said, ‘Orientalism reconsidered’, Cultural Critique, 1 (1985), 89–107 (89) 23 24

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In Orientalism Said wrote of Orientalism as a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience. The Orient is … the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other … the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.26

Further in a way particularly pertinent to the discussions in this volume, he wrote, ‘All pilgrimages to the Orient passed through, or had to pass through, the Biblical lands; most of them in fact were attempts either to relive or to liberate from the large, incredibly fecund Orient some portion of JudeoChristian/Greco-Roman actuality.’27 Varisco makes the powerful point that ‘It would be absurd, as Said frequently reminds his critics, to assert flat out that all Orientalists were equally ethnocentric, prejudiced or racist.’28 Sometimes Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt say and do racist and condescending things, sometimes they are in awe of what they see in the East and sometimes they develop respectful relationships with people they encounter. Continuing through this volume, the personal and artistic context in the 1820s and 1830s that impelled Roberts to travel through Egypt and the Holy Land in 1838–39, and that led to the commercial success of the volumes of lithographs produced from this venture, is considered. Naturally many of the same aspects of the artistic, religious and political context also underpinned the subsequent 1840–41 Holy Land journey of Roberts’s friend, Wilkie. In the 1830s there was in Britain an intellectual, religious and political climate very conscious of the importance of the Near Eastern region. Roberts was aware of the public’s wish for new artistic subjects and so he was partly motivated by the possibility of financial success through the sale of his work, as well as by his stated expectation ‘to bring home … the most interesting collection of sketches that has ever left the East.’29 The socio-cultural, political and personal context for David Roberts’s journey to the region is outlined and close consideration given to entries from Roberts’s Holy Land journals and selected artworks. In doing this the narrative of his journey is followed in order to build a  Said, ‘Orientalism’, pp. 1, 2.  Said, ‘Orientalism’, p. 168. 28  Daniel Martin Varisco, Reading Orientalism Said and the Unsaid ((Seattle: University of Washington Press: 2012), p. 181. 29  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 1. 26 27

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­ icture of his behaviour and attitudes and to demonstrate the ways in p which his views were influenced by specific experiences as his travels progressed. Next Sir David Wilkie’s journey to the Near East in 1840–41 is explored. In doing so, it becomes apparent that, whilst both artists emphasised the fundamental importance of first-hand experience and observation, ultimately Wilkie had different aims from those of Roberts. For Roberts, place was paramount; for Wilkie it was history and an explicitly theological intention. Wilkie believed that the attitude to art depicting Biblical stories needed to be challenged and changed. No longer should the conventions of the past be relied upon to convey the sacred story. Direct observation and understanding of the contemporary Holy Land would enable an informed evaluation of what had changed and what had not since the time of Jesus and the prophets. Only through this process could visual representations be true to the original context of history and sacred geography. Aiken argues that the Holy Land should be understood ‘not just as a Cartesian space, but as an intellectual, moral and discordant space; a space charged with the heat of religious debates, a space mapped by the exclusivist ideologies of religious apologetics, filled with the clamour of the engagements of those trying to understand the worst crises of Victorian society; a target for generations of pilgrims and also a space of inspiration and reflection.’30 This summation encapsulates the complex relationship between the Holy Land and Protestant Britain. In the chapters focussing on William Holman Hunt it becomes apparent that his intellectual framework and religious thinking were significantly different from that of his two artistic predecessors who travelled in the Holy Land. Hunt lived at a later time and in a different political climate. He also travelled to the Near East informed by new writings in theology and new discoveries in archaeology. This was a time when scientific and theological challenges and opportunities unknown to Roberts and Wilkie were emerging. Not surprisingly then, Hunt’s artistic and intellectual focus differed from that of his two forerunners. Hunt aligned himself with an intellectual climate intent on critical understanding of the Gospels and the life and historical context of Jesus. He also visited the Holy Land four times at different stages in his life. The most significant comparison 30  Edwin James Aiken, Scriptural Geography: Portraying the Holy Land (London: I.B. Tauris & Co, 2010), p. 1.

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between Hunt and Roberts and Wilkie, however, is Hunt’s use of the complex methodology of biblical typology in the symbolism and subject matter of his religious paintings. This marks Hunt out as a more complex and conceptual theological thinker than either Roberts or Wilkie. It also shows his focus on the conceptual and symbolic, rather than the physical and literal. An analysis of several of Hunt’s artworks, alongside his writing, demonstrates the complex interconnectedness of ideas, place, experience and symbolism in Hunt’s life and art. In order to draw valid conclusions from the textual and visual evidence we also need to be mindful of the multiple and often contradictory ways in which Hunt has been understood by his contemporaries and by subsequent scholars. Finally the various threads examined throughout the book are drawn together, elucidating the findings from an analysis of textual and visual evidence. A more subtle and modulated understanding of the complex attitudes, beliefs and theologies of the three artists than is often evident in contemporary scholarship is necessary, if we are to understand their engagement with the Holy Land of nineteenth-century Britain. Through looking at a range of sources and realising the multiple ways in which they might be interpreted, it is clear that a substantial motivation for nineteenth-­ century exploration in the Near East was to seek evidence to support contemporaneous studies of the Bible and that this both shaped, and was shaped by, British visual culture. Images have a rhetorical power to influence the viewer’s interpretation or to position them as an eyewitness to the scene depicted.31 This latter is exactly what Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt intended: to put the viewer in the places where Jesus lived. Primary and secondary sources, both written and visual, show us that personal experience was a fundamental element of faith for Bible-focussed Protestants in nineteenth-century Britain.

 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 179.

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CHAPTER 2

Britain’s Vision of the Holy Land

Eschatology and Empire Bible-based faith was a strong motivator for many British Protestants to engage with the Holy Land, either through travel or through their personal contemplation. However the political, economic and military significance of the Holy Land and its surrounds was also part of the developing imperial identity of Britain throughout the reign of Victoria, Queen and Empress. The Holy Land was understood and imagined as a geographical region and as an eschatological promise for Christians and part of this thinking reflected complex attitudes to Jews in both Britain and Palestine at the time. The doctrines of millenarianism and restorationism became prominent ideas in the Protestant churches of England and Scotland from the seventeenth century. These beliefs led to the establishment of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, called London Jews’ Society (LJS) in 1809 and influenced subsequent British actions in the Holy Land. Towards the end of the eighteenth century many saw the political and social upheavals of the time as evidence of the coming Armageddon. According to Christian millenarian beliefs, the conversion of the Jews and their return to the Holy Land was to be a precursor to the Second Coming and this belief motivated missionary attempts

© The Author(s) 2020 A. M. Burritt, Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41261-6_2

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to convert Jews throughout the nineteenth century.1 As well as this eschatological perspective, the British cultural context of the time created an awareness of issues relating to Jewish rights and heritage and, indeed, to the Jewishness of Jesus. In 1839 William T Young, British Vice Consul at Jerusalem, wrote in a letter to Viscount Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, There are My Lord two parties to be noticed, who will doubtless consider themselves entitled to some voice in the future disposition of affairs here. The one is, the Jew, unto whom God originally gave this land for possession, and the other, the Protestant Christians, his legitimate offspring—of both these Great Britain seems, I would humbly suggest, the natural Guardian— and they are beginning to take up their position among the other claimants.

This ‘“summarizes widely held English evangelical assumptions concerning Palestine and the Jews, and Protestant Britain’s role as protector of the Jews”’.2 Also in 1839, Young wrote to Palmerston ‘“Great Britain has been the first among the nations to show herself the friend of the children of Israel by sending to the City of David a representative”’.3 In The Holy Land in English Culture 1799–1917, Bar-Yosef analyses the relationship between what he calls ‘the imperial project of exploring, representing and eventually conquering Palestine’ and ‘the long tradition of internalizing those central biblical images—“Promised Land”, “Chosen people”, “Zion”—and applying them to England and the English’. I agree with Bar-Yosef that examining the relationship between British motivation to be in the Holy Land and a range of Protestant religious beliefs can lead to a discourse ‘much more ambiguous than postcolonial criticism has hitherto acknowledged’.4 British perceptions of the Holy Land were complex, nuanced and multi-layered. Whilst millenarianism was an element of some British Protestant thinking, many Protestant Christians adhered to the conviction that, as heirs of God’s promise to Abraham, they had a covenantal relationship with the Holy Land. This relationship, echoing the sentiments of Young decades earlier, was summed up in 1865 in the words 1  Neil Asher Silberman, Digging for God and Country—Exploration, Archaeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land 1799–1917 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 29. 2  Donald Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 238. 3  Lewis, p. 238. 4  Eitan Bar-Yosef, The Holy Land in English Culture 1799–1917: Palestine and the question of Orientalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 4.

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of William Thompson, Archbishop of York, at the inauguration of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF). The country of Palestine belongs to you and to me, it is essentially ours. … It was given to the father of Israel in the words ‘Walk through the land in the length of it and the breadth of it, for I will give it unto ye’. We mean to walk through Palestine, in the length and breadth of it, because that land has been given unto us. It is the land from which comes news of our redemption. It is the land to which we turn as the fountain of all our hopes; it is the land to which we look with as true a patriotism as we do this dear old England.5

When Thompson spoke about Palestine he was encapsulating an attitude which had consciously or otherwise informed British engagement with the Holy Land since the Crusades. Palestine was not simply a geographical region, it was the one place on earth which existed simultaneously as physical and transcendent, present reality and place of future hope. The PEF 1865 prospectus emotes, The words that move our hearts, the hopes that nerve our hands, the faith that heals our sorrows—these are all associated with those barren hills, those ruined heaps of stones and rubbish, those dry watercourses of the Holy Land. Take the Bible in your hand … confess that the aims of the Association which only exists by reason of its love for the Bible, and for its general desire to do all it can for the illustration of God’s word, are noble indeed.6

Queen Victoria agreed to be patron of the PEF and contributed £150 to the organisation. This gesture had significant symbolic power and was seen to endorse the British exploration of Palestine as a national venture.7 Not only was Palestine the Holy Land with the Holy City of Jerusalem at its core, it was inextricably linked to the New Jerusalem of Albion.

The Holy Land in the British Imagination Drawing on the broad cultural, religious and intellectual environment of nineteenth-century Britain enables us to explore the perception of the Holy Land and Britain as inextricably linked through a shared legendary  Bar-Yosef, p. 7–8.  J.  G. Davies, Pilgrimage yesterday and today: why? where? how? (London: SCM Press, 1988), p. 144. 7  Silberman, pp. 86–7. 5 6

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past. The Grail Quest of Arthurian legend grew from the story of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea visiting Britain. The Arthurian stories became popular subjects for nineteenth-century British artists, particularly the Pre-Raphaelites, of which Hunt was a founding member. William Blake’s poem, Milton, popularly known as Jerusalem, which, when set to music by Hubert Parry, became the great patriotic anthem of the First World War, is also grounded in this imagined past. Like artworks, the poem is a primary source, both reflecting and shaping British self-­ perception of the time: And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the countenance divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among those dark satanic mills?8

In the nineteenth-century Protestant mind, if the Holy Lamb of God did walk through the hills of England then, like the Bible lands, the land of Britain was forever sanctified. Furthermore, the idea of sanctified land was inextricably linked to God’s promise of salvation which began with God’s covenant with Abraham, who was to be ‘the ancestor of a multitude of nations’ (Genesis 17.4) and to whom God said, ‘I will give to you, and to your offspring after you … all the land of Canaan’ (Genesis 17.8). The salvation promise would finally be fulfilled at the Second Coming of Christ which, according to Millenarian belief, would only happen after the return of the Jews to Jerusalem and their conversion to Christianity. But the British relationship to Jerusalem was not just the recollection of an ancient and legendary past or an eschatological hope. The final lines of Blake’s poem resonate with the Protestant expectation of God’s earthly, as well as heavenly kingdom and, for many, are a cry for justice and peace amidst the ‘dark satanic mills’ of the Industrial Revolution. I will not cease from mental fight, 8  William Blake, in The Book of Common Praise with supplement, compiled by a Committee of the General Synod of the Church of England in Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1947), pp. 655–658.

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Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land.

This biblically based vision provided hope of an escape from an increasingly industrialised present. New expressions of Protestant religious art were to provide the visual language with which to express such evolving religious thinking.

The Intellectual Context The nineteenth century was a time of profound change in British society and in the Church. When influential churchman and Christian thinker John Henry Newman was born in 1801 the dominant critical paradigm for the English church was evidential theology. This view held that theological truths could be proved through reason, by considering the evidence apparent in the design and manifestations of the natural world and the occurrence of situations taken to be miraculous. By the time of Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, the Church of England had faced enormous internal challenges to its beliefs and practices from the tensions between the Tractarian or Oxford Movement, the traditional High Church, Broad Church thinking and Evangelical perspectives. Outside the church, developments and new ideas in science, archaeology and literary criticism had also issued a serious challenge to long-held beliefs about the Christian faith and the authority of the Bible. British and other European scientists were continuing to develop new ideas about the natural world and human history, based on ongoing exploration and the recording of material culture, geology, geography, flora and fauna. Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830–33) which introduced the notion of ‘deep time’ made literal interpretation of the creation stories in Genesis or the story of Noah and the Flood highly problematic. Lyell argued that the earth itself was far older than anyone had imagined and that the existence of fossils showed that all living beings had not been created in their final form in six days. Alongside profound developments in the physical sciences there were developments in the discipline of philology with the study of newly understood ancient languages. On 1 January 1838 Rawlinson sent the first translations of Bisitun (Old Persian) to the Royal Asiatic Society in London. Biblical philologists also emphasised the importance of studying the Bible in its historical and socio-cultural context. During the 1830s the

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Tübingen school of German biblical scholars proposed that the Bible was a compilation of texts from different times and places and that hence, not surprisingly, it contained internal inconsistencies and logically impossible chronologies.9 In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. In the same year geologist Sir Joseph Prestwich read a paper to the Royal Society and archaeologist John Evans spoke to the Society of Antiquaries about what they called the ‘Antiquity of Man’.10 This explained a scientific understanding that human beings had existed on earth for many thousands of years before the dates suggested by a literal reading of the Bible and thus established the concept of prehistory. Of course this was not the first time challenges had been posed to the thinking of theologians and the devout laity. The eighteenth-century rationalists had also called into question many of the assumptions which were implicit in traditional Christian teaching. Their focus on human reason and conscience, rather than experiential and metaphysical evidence, led them to question the likelihood of miracles and other supernatural manifestations. All these new scientific and philological views provided impetus for direct experience of the Holy Land to provide evidence or reassurance, depending on one’s perspective. Such journeys or expeditions required visual documentation. A new technology, with a scientific basis, also emerged which was to challenge traditional visual culture and nineteenth-century ideas of truthfulness, authority and authenticity—photography. After 1851 the development of the wet collodion technique made it much easier for photographers to travel with the necessary equipment to remote and exotic places and a strong market developed for their images in Britain. Nevertheless, even earlier in the century, French and British photographers, employing the techniques of the daguerreotype and calotype, had travelled to the Near East, primarily to record archaeological sites and architecture.11 Photography also became viable at a time when, as well as important political, strategic and economic activity in the Near East, the religious climate provided impetus. Edward Robinson’s Biblical Researches  Naomi Shepherd, The Zealous Intruders (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 77.  Colin Renfrew, Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007), p. 10. 11  Eyal Onne, Photographic heritage of the Holy Land 1839–1914 (Manchester, UK: Institute of Advanced Studies, Manchester Polytechnic, 1980), pp. 8–9. 9

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in Palestine was published the year before the first photographer recorded images of Holy Land sites.12 Photography became a significant method of exploring proposed connections between biblical history and geographical contexts.13 In nineteenth-century Britain the increasing availability of photographs contributed to a developing interest in the visualisation of the Holy Land and its surrounds. In considering how images have been used subsequently to shape perceptions of the period, we need, however, to be cognizant that photographs have provided evidence for both critical and nostalgic attitudes to and by imperial Britain.14 Photographs are not, though, objective records and the photographer chooses what to include and what to exclude, what to emphasise and what message to convey to the intended audience. Urry and Larsen declare that, ‘Ironically, the camera-eye overlooked what the human eye at the scene could clearly see and captured what it could hardly see. By erasing contemporary signs, modern humans and connections elsewhere, western travel photography imprisoned the Orient in a timeless ancient space of architecture and monuments to produce the desired authentic Orient.’15 Nevertheless, as there was an impression that such a scientific development as photography must be true and unbiased it aligned well with the increasing interest in scientific methods and, in turn, the Protestant emphasis on reason and the need for empirical evidence. Photography had a significant influence on Near Eastern iconography, particularly the photographic results of the three journeys to Egypt and Palestine which the Quaker, Francis Frith, made between 1856 and 1860, and Francis Bedford’s work when he accompanied the Prince of Wales on his 1862 Royal Tour of the region. David Roberts’s and David Wilkie’s trips took place not long before the major advances in photography which were to influence Western perceptions of the East.16

 Onne, p. 8.  Onne, p. 8. 14  James R. Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the visualization of the British Empire (Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 16. 15  John Urry and Jonas Larsen, The Tourist Gaze 3.0 (Sage Publications: Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC: 2011), p. 169. 16  Blood in Debra N Mancoff, David Roberts: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land (San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, 1999), p. 6. 12 13

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A Photographer’s Theology Frith’s and Bedford’s motivations and Holy Land subject matter clearly align with those of Roberts and Wilkie. Frith was later to be much influenced by Roberts’s Holy Land images and, like Roberts, expressed his gratitude all his life for ‘childhood … a home life steeped in a genuine and healthy Religion, strict but not sour, … no element of repression or severity’.17 A consideration of Frith’s religious beliefs and writings adds another dimension to an understanding of British Christian engagement with the Holy Land. Frith was a devout and thoughtful Quaker whose writing A True Story of My Life—A Biographical, Metaphysical, and Religious History was, unfortunately, never published. It currently exists as seventy-eight leaves of autographed text held by the writer’s grandson.18 In 1884, with fellow Quakers, William Edward Turner and W. Pollard, Frith did publish A Reasonable Faith. Short Religious Essays for the Times. By Three ‘Friends’. These essays explain Frith’s beliefs and give further insight into his Holy Land photographs and journeys. The publication begins by noting that many educated contemporaries are questioning the known Creeds and theological interpretations of the time. They doubt God and turn to Rationalism for answers. This attitude is, in part, say the three Quakers, because of the unreasonableness and authoritarian assumptions of many in the Church who deny the right of individual conscience. The writers are concerned that such a position leads to superficiality and individualism without the benefit of ‘historic evidence, and of the insight into Spiritual Truth, gained by previous generations … lamentably insufficient for the needs both of the Intellect and the Soul’. To such people, they claim, ‘it is our object to present a view of Christianity which is at all events intelligible and reasonable’. Thoughtful people, they argue, ‘want a Faith at once Scriptural and reasonable. They have a profound conviction that the religion of the Bible cannot possibly, if rightly understood, conflict with the best human estimate of justice and pure morality, nor with sound reason.’19 Later in the essays they assert that the Bible is full of divine Revelations and points to all that is needed for salvation: ‘but the Bible is a depository of principles  Joanna Talbot, Francis Frith (London and Sydney: Macdonald & Co, 1985), p. 2.  Douglas R. Nickel, Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine: A Victorian photographer abroad (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 21. 19  Francis Frith, Edward Turner and W. Pollard, A reasonable faith, essays by three ‘Friends’ (London: Macmillan and Co., 1884), p. 3. 17 18

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rather than of precise rules; and these must be studied, not blindly or superficially, but with discrimination and Divine enlightenment’.20 Significantly, their theology is clear that it is ‘the ever-loving Christ. … He and not the Bible (as the Book itself tells us) is “THE WORD OF GOD”.’21 As we will see later in this chapter, this is also the position professed by the Church of England theologian Charles Gore in his 1890 publication, On the Results of Biblical Criticism. For Frith a great strength of Quakerism was its basis in reason. Aligning with statements in A Reasonable Faith and with such eighteenth-century thinking as Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity, he wrote in his memoir, ‘“Quakerism ought specially to commend itself to 19th century thought … it permits so wide a range of personal independence of thought and conviction; and … because of its intensely practical, and, I may say, scientific character; inasmuch as it insists upon nothing as a matter of essential faith which cannot be made intelligible to the understanding as a practically useful tenet.”’22 Frith’s strong biblical faith and adherence to reason enabled him to see nineteenth-century science as enlightening, rather than threatening. He wrote in his memoir, ‘“I wish to observe and record the facts of my experience of spirit-life with Darwinian exactness and honesty” and “I cannot doubt that even the Bible will bend to facts with less violence than facts to the Bible”’.23 In 1894 Frith published The Quaker Ideal in which he wrote, ‘“nothing that has a Divine basis, as, for instance, Christianity itself, or the revelation of religious truth contained in the Bible, need fear dissolution”’.24 When Frith embarked on his photographic journey through Egypt and Palestine he very much emphasised the religious significance of place and his accompanying text enhances the emotional and experiential nature of his work. In Palestine he wrote the ‘desolate and featureless landscape bearing mostly unimpressive ruins could hardly communicate the historical and religious importance of the place’.25 Tellingly, in Jerusalem he observed:

 Frith et al., p. 94.  Frith et al., p. 102. 22  Nickel, p. 113. 23  Nickel, pp. 111–112. 24  Nickel, p. 113. 25  Nickel, p. 121. 20 21

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I cannot write lightly of Holy Palestine. It is true that the natural features of the country are, for the most part, monotonous and comparatively uninteresting,—that the towns are paltry and dirty in the extreme,—that the Turkish Mohammedan population is ignorant and bigoted,—that the Arabs who infest its solitudes are the laziest, the most cowardly and worthless set of fellows,—in a word, and in every sense of it, the greatest vagabonds in existence: yet, in spite of all this, and overwhelming it triumphantly, comes the thrilling recollection—that this was the country of Abraham and the Prophets!—these the cities of David!—and, first and last, and mingling every line of its eventful history,—that this was the spot of His earth chosen by its Creator from the beginning, upon which the plan of His salvation should be finished. It was in Palestine that he was made flesh and dwelt among men. And it was especially in Jerusalem and its neighbourhood that He fulfilled his ministry, manifested his Divine nature, and finally, in one awful hour, ‘in his own body on a tree”, sustained the accumulated sins, and suffered the concentrated agony of the whole human race. No wonder that men have striven to perpetuate the local memories of even the most trivial events of this glorious and awful period.26

There is no doubt of Frith’s faith in the Incarnation and the profound significance of sacred geography, with its soteriological associations in the divine plan. Unfortunately, however, he did not exhibit the tolerance or understanding towards the contemporary inhabitants which was at times exhibited by Roberts, Wilkie and, particularly, Hunt. For Frith what mattered were the biblical associations and, most significantly, his belief that he was present where prophets, biblical kings and the earthly Jesus had lived. Of the topography around Nazareth he wrote, ‘“these are the natural features which, for nearly thirty years, met the almost daily view of Him who increased in wisdom and stature within this beautiful seclusion”’.27 At Bethlehem Frith believed he photographed ‘“the actual place of the Nativity”’, ‘“the spot where the wise men presented their gifts”’ and ‘“the place where the shepherds were appraised of the birth of the saviour”’. Frith adhered to the notion of the essential changelessness of the Holy Land, writing in Sinai and Palestine of Mount Horeb, ‘“How great an interest has the scene in which we may look up, as did the Israelites, to the Mount! … In such views as these we rejoice that neither nature nor man can change the main features of the scene, and thus disturb our efforts to  Nickel, pp. 121–123.  Nickel, p. 123.

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read history by the light of our own impressions.”’28 It is clear that the experiential and imagined engagement with place was crucial to Frith’s understanding of its spiritual power and sacred history. As Nickel notes, it is difficult to gauge the influence of Frith’s Holy Land photographs but a ‘sizeable contingent’ of moderate and educated Protestant clergymen were patrons of Frith’s Egypt and Palestine.29 However, two editions of The Athenaeum do some shed light on the critical reception of Frith’s Holy Land photographs. In the article, ‘From Old Jewry to Jerusalem in One Night’, we read: The Holy Land is the last annexation of Art; and interesting comments on the great Book of Truth—the purest, wisest, and most perfect book of books—do they make … here … comes Jerusalem to London. … Mr Frith … travelling on an Art-crusade, has brought home these negatives … and they are now published with a descriptive Catalogue. The dust of creeds has, however, raised such a thick mist over this defaced and widowed land, that, unfortunately, the sites of the greatest events in Scripture are unknown. … It is, indeed, only the unchangeable part of the Holy Land that is really unchangeably interesting to us all. We know, at least, that such mountains were before David’s eyes … that those anemones. … Our Saviour’s robe pushed past when he went up to the mountain to pray … that that dismal shore … his stately foot has printed,—that somewhere here rose the cedar-beams that shut in the cherub-guarded Ark.

Frith’s approach was seen as valuable by ‘“taking several exhaustive views of the same place, so that we can in some degree walk round this Gaza, or this Hebron, and view it under all aspects.”’ After discussing several of the places visited by Frith, the Athenaeum writer observes, ‘we leave them all, not without a hope that our scriptural commentators will make use of this great help to the biblical student, this palpable auxiliary to the readers of the old Hebrew history; for by these views they may follow Jehu in his chariot and Absalom on his charger; may walk where Lazarus walked, and track the footsteps of the apostles, the saints, and the martyrs.’30 Clearly, like Frith himself, the reviewer sees great value in a vicarious experience of those sacred places perceived to be untainted by change.  Nickel, pp. 124, 125.  Nickel, p. 134. 30  The Athenaeum, ‘From Old Jewry to Jerusalem in one night’, The Athenaeum, 19 June 1858, p. 791. 28 29

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Again in The Athenaeum, in an article entitled Stereoscopes; or Travel Made Easy, we are told that ‘Photography has united Science and Art’. The writer states, Frith’s ‘views of the Holy Land from Jerusalem to Mount Lebanon are also to be published as a Biblical comment which must interest the whole Christian world, who hitherto have had to depend on the pictorial statement of artists who too often … would turn black into white, or round into square, for the sake of the pyramidal grouping and the central light, or such articles of the old creed’.31 There is an assumption here, of course, that painters often distort the truthfulness of their images for compositional and aesthetic reasons. Photographers like Frith frequently did exactly the same thing in their choice of angle, light and scale. Nineteenth-century admirers, however, assumed the inerrant factual accuracy of the photographic picture, the ‘scientific’ record. The flyer (author unknown), announcing the availability of photographs from Frith’s last journey to the East, proclaims ‘The value of a photograph—its principal charm at least—is its infallible truthfulness’.32 The sense that a photograph must be a truthful image gave such works power and authority in the visual culture of the day. For Frith photography was not just an aesthetic medium or a way of communicating what he perceived to be geographical, archaeological or ethnographic truths; it was a medium which enabled a powerful spiritual and moral rhetoric. A reviewer in The Times wrote, Frith’s photographs ‘carry us far beyond anything that is in the power of the most accomplished artist to transfer to his canvas’. Talbot believes Frith always aimed at truthful and accurate impressions, citing his comment about Jerusalem, ‘“in it we have the very reflection of Jerusalem … as with a much lined face, such a truthful record is of more value than the most elaborately beautiful picture”’. In The Art Journal of 1859 Frith wrote of photography, that which undoubtedly lies at the root of its popularity, is its essential truthfulness. … We can scarcely avoid moralizing in connection with this subject; since truth is a divine quality, at the very foundation of everything that is lovely in earth and heaven; and it is, we argue, quite impossible that this quality can so obviously and largely pervade a popular art, without exercising

31  The Athenaeum, ‘Stereoscopes; or, travel made easy’, The Athenaeum, 20 March 1858, p. 371. 32  Julia Van Haaften, ‘Introduction’, in Egypt and the Holy Land in historic photographs, ed. by Jon E. Manchip White (New York: Dover Publications, 1980), p. xvii.

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the happiest and most important influence, both on the tastes and morals of the people.33

Frith’s comment resonates with Roberts’s, Wilkie’s and Hunt’s observations of the importance of ‘truthful’ representation and the moral power of religious art. For Frith photographing the Holy Land was an act of piety. As Hunt also did, Frith wrote of the physical challenges involved in producing his images in a sometimes hostile place. Nevertheless, whilst the lands of the Bible were of deep personal significance to Frith, like Roberts he had an astute entrepreneurial understanding of the Victorian market and public trends, particularly with regard to an interest in topographical photography.34

The Artists and the ‘Orient’ By travelling to the Holy Land Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt attempted to live out the distinctly Protestant emphasis on direct experience. Their writing and art in this context provide us with often contradictory observations and assessments of Jewish and Muslim beliefs and practices and Near Eastern cultures. An examination of their writings and artworks clearly shows that each of these artists did, in particular instances, behave in racist and imperialist ways. This is particularly true of Hunt, largely based on comments he made whilst in the Holy Land and his depiction of Biblical and contemporary subject matter. We need, however, to engage historical perspective as we examine these artists in the context of their socio-cultural milieu. It is also salient to acknowledge that their writings reflect changes which occurred in their attitudes as a result of their personal experiences in Egypt and the Holy Land. The thinking of Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt was far from inflexible and it certainly was not always consistent. The extent to which Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt had an overtly political motive and that their work both reflected, and was intended to further, British imperialism in the Near East is difficult to determine based on primary source evidence. There are diverse and often contradictory opinions about the nature of Hunt’s personal faith and beliefs and his behaviour in the East. Sometimes his own writing reflects disparaging attitudes to Arabs and Turks whom he  Talbot, p. 6.  Van Haaften, p. vii.

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met in specific instances and contexts. However, he was a strong supporter of a Jewish homeland. As with many people, Hunt’s views in many respects appear to have changed over time as a result of experience and exposure to new ideas and perspectives. As his travels to the Holy Land spanned four decades, there is more evidence tracing his changes of attitude than there is for Roberts and Wilkie. Writing by Roberts and Wilkie also often exhibits a sense of superiority and judgement in their interaction with the people whom they encountered on their Near Eastern travels and in their observations of the cultures and physical environments they experienced. Assumptions have been made about Roberts and Wilkie based on letters, journals, style of dress adopted in different situations and depictions of scenes and people in the Holy Land and its surrounds. It is essential, however, to avoid generalisations and to consider the specific context in which each of these sources was produced, as well as the motivations of the artists. As previously mentioned, scrutiny of written and visual evidence shows that all three artists adapted their writing for different audiences and purposes and that the market and audience for their art also influenced different depictions and interpretations of what they saw. Roberts, like Hunt, after spending time in the countries he painted, developed different perspectives about the places and people from the ones with which he began his journey. It is also clear that many opinions expressed in writing by Roberts were not translated to his art work. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are revealed through close analysis of text, image and context. One possible interpretation, of course, is that Roberts wrote what he actually thought but painted what he thought people would want to buy. There is a strong argument that Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt were well aware that the countries and cultures of the Near East they visited, rather than representing a monolithic and stereotyped ‘Orient’, actually represented great diversity in belief, politics, lifestyle and cultural practice. Perhaps this is the major reason why they appear to present contradictory views on occasions. In fact their perceptions were more varied and complex than their critics would suggest and they were responding to different people in different places and contexts. Likewise the factors which influenced the diverse beliefs and behaviours professed and expressed in the name of British Christianity in relation to developing imperial identity were also complex.

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British Religion Throughout the nineteenth century, as well as the Established Church, the religious, social and cultural fabric of Britain included a wide range of Protestant Dissenters, the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish community. The Catholic Emancipation Act was passed in 1829. Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880, although baptised into the Church of England, had been born a Jew and prominent Jewish figures such as Sir Moses Montefiore and Baron Lionel de Rothschild were instrumental in facilitating British exploration and Jewish settlement in the Holy Land. In fact, prime minister, Disraeli borrowed four million pounds from Rothschild to finance the purchase of Egypt’s shares in the Suez Canal before he told parliament.35 These various endeavours were motivated by religious, philanthropic, political, economic and military interests. The emphasis on critical enquiry and deep moral reflection which particularly characterised Broad Church thinking was fundamental to Anglican theology by the end of Victoria’s reign.36 However, this refocusing did not come about without rigorous intellectual and spiritual reflection and, at times, acrimony and extreme tension. Further, throughout the nineteenth century attitudes changed and many Anglo-Catholic practices, once seen as radical and ‘popish’, such as the wearing of vestments and the emphasis on the sacraments, became accepted Anglican practice. In comments recalled by Hunt in his Memoir, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the historian and writer Thomas Carlyle was extremely disparaging of Hunt’s depiction of Christ wearing what he described as sacerdotal vestments. Hunt wrote that when Carlyle saw The Light of the World (Appendix Fig. A.1) in Hunt’s studio he condemned it as ‘a mere papistical fantasy’.37 Of course Hunt wrote his Memoir many years after the encounter but the comment does indicate something of the Christological debates which were provoked by visual depictions of Jesus. Whilst there were still obvious differences of belief and practice between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ elements of the Church of England, the real challenge for the Church emerged as being the values and practices of the  Simon Montefiore, Jerusalem: the biography (London: Orion Books, 2012), p. 435.  Stephen in James R.  Moore, ed., Religion in Victorian Britain, Volume III: Sources (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 63. 37  William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Vol. I (London: Macmillan and Co., 1905), pp. 355–6. 35 36

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increasingly secular, scientific and technological society in which it operated.38 Evidence of tracts, letters, sermons, court cases, figures of church attendance and newspaper coverage of the time certainly suggests that this was a century during which both faith and doubt flourished. Tennyson’s lines, ‘There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds’,39 was a telling statement of the age. Interestingly, in this time of ‘honest doubt’, throughout the nineteenth century the actual number of people attending church apparently rose. By 1880, however, there was no longer an increase relative to population growth.40 There was, however, a difficulty ascertaining reliable figures of church attendance and professed adherence, due to the way in which such information was gathered in the nineteenth century. For example, the census of religious worship in Britain directed by Horace Mann in 1851, relied on attendance numbers counted by clergy or people working with Mann. They counted attendances at services and hence could have counted some people more than once and they provided figures for only one day, rather than being comparative across time.41 From the 1830s to 1901 over 5500 new Church of England churches were built and the number of parish clergy increased by 11,000. There were, of course, also the congregations of many Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church. Analysis of the 1851 census suggested the overall number of people who attended church on the day ranged from 41 per cent of the total population to 58 per cent of the ‘eligible’ population. Interestingly, this was seen at the time as an indication that the churches were failing. Only half the churchgoers attended the Church of England. The traditional British culture was one in which people were part of a geographical parish and were baptised into the Established Church. Significantly, though, church attendance was not seen as the crucial measure of faith. From the Protestant perspective Sunday worship was ‘the outward and visible sign of one’s inner religious state and outward moral condition’. Many who 38  Julie Melnyk, Victorian Religion, Faith and Life in Britain (Westport, USA: Praeger Publishers, 2008), p. 30. 39  Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam Section XCVI, [accessed on 17 July 2013]. 40  Gerald Parsons, ‘Introduction: Victorian Religion, Paradox and Variety’, in Religion in Victorian Britain. Volume I: Traditions ed. by Gerald Parsons (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 1–13 (p. 5). 41  Robert Currie, Alan Gilbert, Lee Horsley, Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 10.

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did not regularly attend worship still considered themselves ‘supporters of the established church’. Cox argues that in a changing society, ‘Victorians struggled with a world of religious voluntarism in which the established churches had to compete with openly tolerated indifference, and with an array of aggressive alternative Christian denominations’.42 Regardless of the real and perceived challenges, there was still a strong belief that religion and religious institutions were good for people and good for society.43 Mann, the director of the census, wrote, ‘The history of men and states shows nothing more conspicuously than this—that in proportion as a pure and practical religion is acknowledged and pursued are individuals materially prosperous and nations orderly and free. It is thus that religion has the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come.’44 The belief in the value of religion to improve societies and the lives of individuals also informed the nineteenth-century missionary impulse. British overseas missionary activity seemed to embody contradictory elements. There was a sense of Western superiority and categorisations of many non-Western people as less advanced, even dangerous and barbaric but there was also a desire to treat the recipients of missionary activity as fellow children of God. Missionaries were following the directive of Jesus to ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you’ (Matthew 28:19–20a). Much missionary literature was produced for Sunday schools, so it was considered important that British Christian children would realise foreign children were just like them but without what was believed to be the benefit of a Christian culture and heritage.45 Although overseas missions could be seen as bastions of imperialism embodying ‘highly visible hierarchies of white privilege’, there was also considered reflection on their role. The mid-Victorian missionary theorist Henry Venn argued missionaries should ‘commit themselves to creating non-Western Christian institutions that were “self-supporting, self-governing, and self-extending”, with the

42  Jeffrey Cox, ‘Worlds of Victorian religion’, in the Victorian World, ed. by Martin Hewitt (New York: Routledge, 2014), 433–448 (p. 434). 43  Cox, p. 435. 44  Cox, p. cviii. 45  Cox, p. 446.

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ultimate goal being “the euthanasia of missions”’. Many missions also served to resist the developing scientific racism spreading late in the century.46 Necessarily, the factions within the Church of England developed their positions in a context. Nineteenth-century British theology is a development of, and reaction to, much theology and ecclesiology of the eighteenth century. Whilst much of the tension and change in the nineteenth-century Church of England related to internal practices and politics, the fundamental theological, doctrinal and ecclesiastical positions were profoundly influenced by socio-cultural, political and scholarly activities in the broader world. The most significant areas of intellectual challenge came from new scientific theories, especially those relating to human origins, new approaches to biblical criticism through a literary and historical lens and the developing discipline of Near Eastern archaeology. These challenges also enabled engagement with questions of profound concern to many Christians at the time: Was the Bible literally true? Did its narratives record historical events or were the Old Testament accounts purely typological and soteriological? What was the land like where Jesus walked? It was in the context of these questions that Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt travelled to the Holy Land and that the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) was formed in 1865. Whilst not wanting to oversimplify complex theological, doctrinal and ecclesiological positions, it is helpful to consider some essential points of difference and similarity and to draw attention to the shifting positions and allegiances during that time. The Evangelical or Low Church tradition in the Church of England was grounded in Protestantism and influenced by the eighteenth-century Evangelical revival which was also the basis of Wesleyan Methodism. This view emphasised the authority of scripture and the importance of personal piety and faith as the way to salvation. It embodied a consequent aversion to priestly authority. Like other Anglicans, the Evangelicals accepted the Thirty-Nine Articles, the set of doctrinal formulae established in its final form in 1571, in an attempt to define Church of England positions in matters of dogma,47 but they did not place emphasis on the authority of church history or the role of a priesthood to interpret doctrine. Many nineteenth-century Evangelicals  Cox, p. 445.  The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. by F.  L. Cross (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 1349. 46 47

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hoped that the newly developing scientific approach to archaeology in the Holy Land would provide proof of the historical veracity of scriptural narratives. Evangelicals were also characterised by their commitment to issues of social justice, such as the abolition of the slave trade and improving factory conditions for workers. The Tractarian or Anglo-Catholic and High Church traditions also emphasised the importance of scripture and, like Evangelicals, used the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. They too valued personal devotion, but crucially saw the church and the clergy as key in interpreting scripture and tradition. Tractarians saw themselves as inheritors of Catholic tradition whilst High Churchmen saw themselves as Protestant. Adherents of the High Church and Tractarian positions also emphasised the efficacy and continuity of the sacraments.48 Later nineteenth-century High Churchmen such as the writers of Lux Mundi, a ‘Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation’, published in 1889, were liberal in their views of new scientific and critical approaches, whereas earlier Tractarians, such as Newman, viewed liberal theological and political attitudes as a step towards atheism.49 Tractarians recognised the authority of church doctrine in its historical context, valued a teaching authority in the writings of the Church Fathers and believed in the authority of an ordained Anglican priesthood through apostolic succession. Unlike the Anglican Evangelical and Protestant view of the Eucharist as a symbol to remind believers of Jesus’s loving sacrificial act, and as an act of Christian fellowship, or the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, the Tractarians believed in a Real Presence in the elements of the Eucharist and placed considerable importance on this sacrament.50 Influenced by these views, in the second half of the nineteenth century the Anglo-Catholic Ritualist movement developed. This group placed great emphasis on the relationship between liturgy and church architecture. The third group within Anglicanism was the Broad Church movement. The Broad Church was not an actual party within the Church, rather it represented an attitude reflected in the views of many educated and liberal people who embraced new ideas and sought tolerance of diverse opinions. 48  Gerald Parsons, ‘Reform, Revival and Realignment: The Experience of Victorian Anglicanism’, in Religion in Victorian Britain. Volume I: Traditions ed. by Gerald Parsons (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 14–66 (p. 30). 49  Horton Davies, Worship and theology in England: From Newman to Martineau, 1850–1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 181, 190. 50  Melnyk, p. 29.

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Proponents of Broad Church views did not focus so much on the nature of worship and liturgy, as on the breadth of ideas which they believed could be accommodated within Anglican belief and practice. Whilst they believed that the Bible contained sacred truth, they advocated serious consideration of developments in science and saw great value in deliberating the consequences of new approaches to textual criticism. For Broad Church thinking the search for truth was paramount. Like Anglican Evangelicals, Broad Church proponents were concerned with issues of social justice. Probably the most significant contribution of the Broad Church to the discourse around personal faith was the question raised about the morality of the God of scripture if literally interpreted. This issue, along with doubt about the morality of eternal punishment and substitutionary atonement, was for some the greatest stumbling block to personal faith in the second half of the nineteenth century. The key issues for religious debate shifted throughout the course of the nineteenth century, and hence shifting alliances can also be seen between church factions and reflected in visual culture at different times. Contributing to these debates, the role of text and different perspectives on hermeneutics continued to intersect with contemporaneous approaches to archaeology. Archibald H. Sayce, Assyriologist, clergyman, comparative philologist and president of the Society of Biblical Archaeology from 1898 to 1919, challenged the developing methodology of textual criticism. He held the view that this approach focussed solely on an analysis of internal consistencies and inconsistencies of language and in so doing ignored the external evidence of archaeology.51 Of course archaeological and material evidence had the potential to either contradict or corroborate the evidence of, and interpretation of, text. Christological controversies were also central to discourses around higher criticism. Significant debate about the validity of historical criticism centred on the perceived differences between the Old and New Testaments in terms of the revelation they contained and the nature of truth within the texts. When it came to the persona and teaching of Jesus many churchmen stopped short of statements which could imply any fallibility on the part of an omniscient Christ, while still seeking to situate Jesus firmly in the social context of the first century. Roberts and Wilkie both wrote about the perceived continuity between 51  Barbara Zink MacHaffie, ‘“Monument Facts and Higher Critical Fancies”: Archaeology and the Popularization of Old Testament Criticism in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Church History, 50 (3), 1981, 316–328 (p. 326).

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first-century and nineteenth-century Palestine and Hunt used contemporary physical features of the places and people he visited to situate his images of the biblical Jesus. Throughout the nineteenth century the argument moved from the issue fundamental to Evangelicals, that the words of the Bible are direct revelation, to the Christological position that the person of Christ is the revelation and the Bible is a vehicle by which this revelation has been communicated to humanity. In 1890 Gore was criticised for statements which were interpreted as suggesting the fallibility of the earthly Jesus. With regard to interpretation of the Old Testament, Gore wrote, ‘Christianity is a religion of a Person. … The test question of the Church to her catechumens has never been: “Dost thou believe the Bible?” But “Dost thou believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?” … The Bible is the record of the proclamation of the revelation, not the revelation itself. The revelation is in the Person of Christ.’52 Some late nineteenth-century analyses clearly distinguish between the historical veracity of the Old Testament and the New Testament, accepting the accounts of Jesus’s life as historically true. They argue, however, for an understanding of the Old Testament incorporating new approaches to textual criticism and the application of new scientific knowledge to see the Old Testament as containing spiritual, rather than necessarily literal, truths. Another key concern of the time was the issue of morality as represented in the nature of God in the Bible. In 1890, A. L. Moore took up this issue but in his case, regarding the legacy of Calvinism. Moore wrote of ‘The unbelief which is due to reaction from Calvinistic Christianity’ saying, Now, the most striking fact in the present day is that unbelief not only claims to be, but so often is, the result of a true protest of the conscience and the moral nature of man. And if Christianity cannot justify itself, and appeal to the highest and truest moral ideas of man, it cannot hope to stand. I for one dare say it ought not to stand. If, then, I were asked what was the main cause of unbelief in the present day, I should say, not science, not new truths in history and criticism, but a higher tone of morality acting upon an immoral travesty of the gospel of Christ.53

52  Gore in James R.  Moore, ed., Religion in Victorian Britain. Volume III: Sources (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 61. 53  A. L. Moore in James R. Moore, p. 336.

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Moore’s concern was that the loving moral message of Christ’s life and teaching had been distorted by a theology emphasising the sinfulness of humanity, everlasting punishment and the lack of human free will. The extent to which Calvinist Presbyterian ideas may or may not have informed their thinking, behaviour and oeuvre needs to be considered and evaluated when analysing Roberts’s and Wilkie’s writing and art works. In this time of intellectual and personal turmoil in matters of faith, many Victorian believers found great comfort and reassurance in the various ‘Lives of Jesus’ which were written from the mid-Victorian period onwards. Many of these ‘Lives’ were sentimental and not necessarily based on rigorous biblical scholarship, but their strength lay in their attempt to portray the life of Jesus in the context of first-century Palestine.54 This Jesus was a living being whose life was a moral exemplar for the believer rather than a remote entity to be approached only through church doctrine and sacraments. The emphasis on literary styles which evoke a sense of the person of Christ living in a natural environment and in loving relationship with others can be seen to complement the emotional, pious and personally experiential tone of many Victorian hymns, as well as much visual culture of the period. Often dismissed as sentimental and fanciful by subsequent generations, such hymns and paintings provided a valuable support to the simple and sincere faith of many people in a time of uncertainty and division within the church and society.

Influences of Visual Culture and Religious Literature It was in this socio-cultural context that Hunt’s religious images were believed to have a positive moral and spiritual influence. Commenting on the value of engravings after Hunt’s works The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (Appendix Fig. A.3) and The Light of the World (Appendix Fig. A.1), Hunt’s first biographer, Frederic George Stephens, wrote, ‘Indeed a national service is rendered by the publication of really noble transcripts from noble pictures like these. Where the pictures cannot go, the engravings penetrate. Their appeal is infinitely extended … and all the good which such thoughtful and purposeful art can effect … is multiplied a

 Parsons, ‘Reform, Revival and Realignment’, Vol. I, p. 51.

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thousand-fold.’55 The extremely popular illustrated Bibles, and publications such as W. and E. Finden’s 1836 edition, Landscape Illustrations of the Bible, to which Roberts contributed images, had a similar function in popular piety.56 David Friedrich Strauss’s significant The Life of Jesus Critically Examined was published in 1835 and the most famous and popular of the literary ‘Lives of Jesus’ was written by Frederic William Farrar, ‘historian of language and hermeneutics’ in 1874 nearly forty years later. The latter work was translated into many European languages and into Japanese. In seeking to uncover and portray a Christ who was recognisable in his humanity, Farrar drew on the Gospels, material evidence from contemporary archaeology, first-century Jewish writings, numismatics and, pre-eminently, his own powerful experience of being in the Holy Land.57 In painting The Light of the World (Appendix Fig. A.1), The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (Appendix Fig. A.3) and The Shadow of Death (Appendix Fig. A.4), Hunt drew on exactly these sources too. Again emphasising Christ as moral exemplar, Farrar’s, ‘Galilean carpenter was a being of great nobility and beauty of character, a preacher whose life was the fulfilment of the moral law—our supreme example’.58 Farrar’s The Life of Christ was so popular in the 1870s and 1880s and had a reach far greater than just Britain, because he managed to value the contribution of science, textual criticism and historical context and still write of a personal Saviour whom people could believe loved them, whilst also conveying the belief in a Christ transcending the understanding of human intellectual and reason. Farrar was an enlightened man but not an Enlightenment rationalist. He was also definitely a man of faith. He wrote that his Life is: avowedly and unconditionally the work of a believer. Those who expect to find in it new theories about the divine personality of Jesus, or brilliant combinations of mythic cloud tinged by the sunset imagination of some decadent belief, will look in vain. It has not been written with any direct and special reference to the attacks of sceptical criticism. It is not even intended to deal otherwise than indirectly with the serious doubts of those who, almost against their will, think themselves forced to lapse into a state of 55  Michaela Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible—Representation and Belief in Mid-Victorian Britain (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), p. 171, footnote 198. 56  Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible, p. 171. 57  Ieuan Ellis, ‘Dean Farrar and the Quest for the Historical Jesus’, Theology, Vol. 89 (1986), 109 (pp. 108–115). 58  Ellis, pp. 109–110.

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­ onest disbelief. I may, indeed, venture to hope that such readers, if they h follow me with no unkindly spirit through these pages, may here and there find considerations of real weight and importance, which will solve imaginary difficulties and supply an answer to real objections.59

Like the writing of Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt, Farrar’s Life also reflects the importance placed on actually visiting the holy places of the Bible. With reverent language Farrar wrote, I seized, in the year 1870, the earliest possible opportunity to visit Palestine, and especially those parts of it which will be for ever identified with the work of Christ on earth. Amid those scenes wherein He moved— In the holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed, For our advantage, on the bitter cross.60

For Farrar contemporary Palestine could show him an unchanging context for the life of Jesus, ‘In the midst of those immemorial customs which recalled at every turn the manner of the life He lived … many things came home to me, for the first time, with a reality and vividness unknown before’. He also makes clear, however, the way in which he values the development of human knowledge and understanding, writing, ‘I returned more than ever confirmed in the wish to tell the full story of the Gospels in such a manner and with such illustrations as—with the aid of all that was within my reach of that knowledge which has been accumulating for centuries—might serve to enable at least the simple and the unlearned to understand and enter into the human surroundings of the life of the Son of God’.61 While Farrar’s approach shocked some of his contemporaries who saw it as radical in its interpretation of Jesus and the Gospels, his Life of Christ included accounts of miracles and emphasised the veracity of the eyewitness accounts in the Gospels, arguing that any inconsistences enhanced authenticity.62 Perhaps it is not so surprising that Farrar embraced the 59  Frederic William Farrar, The Life of Christ (London, Paris & Melbourne: Cassell and Company, 1894), p. vii. 60  Farrar, Life, p. vii. 61  Farrar, Life, p. vii. 62  Ellis, p. 111.

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metaphysical elements of the Gospels as he wrote in 1868 that science, ‘has deepened indefinitely our sense of the mysteries around us’.63 Just as it would be a mistake to think of the faith and beliefs of an individual as necessarily static and fixed at a particular point in time, the same can be said of a society. The Anglican capacity to embrace ‘honest doubt’ created an environment in which John Henry Newman could be an Evangelical in his adolescence and early adulthood, a key intellectual figure in the Oxford Movement in his twenties and thirties and die a Roman Catholic cardinal. Sincere faith is usually a journey. Such faith journeys contributed to the physical journeys British archaeologists, topographers, photographers and artists made in the lands where the stories of scripture were set.

Biblical Archaeology and Sacred Geography The nineteenth century, particularly the second half, was a seminal time in the discipline of Near Eastern archaeology. British, German, French and American archaeologists all undertook fieldwork in the Holy Land and its surrounds and the powerful decision makers in Europe were well aware of the strategic significance of the region in both economic and military terms. The conceptual framework around nineteenth-century archaeological excavation in the Near East is far more complex and wide ranging than being simply an endeavour to prove the historical veracity of biblical texts. Yet demonstrating the truth of the Bible was a key motivator for many Victorians. In many instances the practice of art and archaeology endorsed the importance of finding Christian truth grounded in concrete, observable reality.64 Furthermore, this intention sprang from a particularly Protestant understanding of scripture, the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. This in turn led several artists to seek to develop a distinctly Protestant aesthetic and iconography which aligned with a contemporary British vision of the Holy Land, incorporating a reinterpretation of biblical places and figures. For many British artists who travelled and painted in the Holy Land, personal experience and observation of contemporary Palestine and its archaeological ruins was essential to produce an artistic witness to faith.  Farrar in James R. Moore, p. 443.  Simon Coleman, ‘A Tale of Two Centres? Representing Palestine to the British in the Nineteenth Century’, Mobilities, 2(3), November 2007, 331–345 (p. 339). 63 64

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For Wilkie, whose 1841 journey to the Holy Land was partly inspired by Roberts, this concern was encapsulated in his comment in a letter from Jerusalem to William Collins, R.A., in which he wrote: You know of the excellent drawings our friend Roberts has made of various scenes in this place. … Whoever is here and walks round the ancient streets, and stones, and rocks, will be convinced that there are objects neither language nor painting can convey: here are innumerable situations as to distances, heights, and relative positions the reader of Scripture cannot help guessing at, but which our art alone can help him to imagine rightly. In this view our art, instead of supplying the mere fancied illustration, may give what this place so strongly supplies—a collateral evidence of the truth of the sacred writings; may give fresh proof of the correctness of the sacred narrators in what they knew, by showing their accuracy in what we know they must have seen.65

A century and a half after Wilkie’s observations, such views, implying as they do a timeless and unchanging Holy Land, were seen by many scholars as dismissive of the rich nineteenth-century cultures of the region and implying a British sense of ownership of the land in which Jesus walked. To put it another way, the landscape was being viewed through an ‘imperial eye’. Said observed, ‘the Orient, the Arabs, or Islam … separately or together were supposed by mainstream academic thought to be confined to the fixed status of an object frozen once and for all in time by the gaze of western percipients’. He contends, however, ‘the Orient generally, and the Arab world in particular … defied neutral, disinterested or stable definition’.66 Urry and Larsen, drawing on Foucault, observe that our gaze is ‘socially organised and systematised’. It is created through ‘socially patterned and learnt “ways of seeing”’, as Berger put it.67 Western travellers to the Holy Land looked at what they saw in ways influenced by the preconceived ideas they brought with them. Christian travellers were looking for visual evidence of their cultural Christianity. Urry and Larsen go on to discuss 65  Sir David Wilkie, The Life of Sir David Wilkie; with his journals, tours, and critical remarks on works of art; and a selection from his correspondence Volume III ed. by Allan Cunningham, (London: John Murray, 1843; Kessinger Legacy Reprint), p. 426. 66  Edward W.  Said, ‘Orientalism reconsidered’, Cultural Critique, 1 (1985), 89–107 (p. 92). 67  Urry and Larsen, pp. 1–2.

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the semiotics of tourism. They say that the tourist gaze is directed to features which are ‘out of the ordinary’ and the gaze is constructed through recognisable signs. For example, they say, ‘When tourists see two people kissing in Paris what they capture in the gaze is “timeless romantic Paris”. When a small village in England is seen, what they gaze upon is the “real olde England”.’68 Burke makes the decisive point that Whether we are thinking about the intentions of artists or about the ways in which different groups of viewers looked at their work, it is useful to think in terms of the western gaze, for example, the scientific gaze, the colonial gaze, the tourist gaze or the male gaze. The gaze often expresses attitudes of which the viewer may not be conscious, (my italics) whether they are hates, fears or desires projected on to the other.69

Political Imperatives Clearly religion was only one motivating factor for Near Eastern exploration. Throughout the reign of Queen Victoria British explorers, adventurers, diplomats, soldiers and men of commerce traversed the globe in search of economic and political power to strengthen the Empire. The American colonies had been lost in 1783 and France, under Napoleon, had been seeking control in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, capitalising on internal weakness in the declining Ottoman Empire. Britain became directly involved and assisted in Napoleon’s defeat in the region, thereby opening up opportunities for consolidation of British influence in Egypt and Syria/Palestine. It was of vital economic importance that Britain’s route to the wealth of India remained available through the area. It was also in Britain’s interest that Russian power and expansionist interests be contained. A British Consulate was established in Jerusalem in 1838 and the first Protestant church in the Ottoman Empire was consecrated there in 1845, to be completed in 1849. The first Protestant bishopric was established in Jerusalem in 1841, a joint venture of the Church of England and the Prussian Protestants.70 The man chosen to be the first bishop was  Urry and Larsen, pp. 4–5.  Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: the use of images as historical evidence, (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), pp. 125–126. 70  HRH Victoria, Queen Victoria’s Journals (Principal Royal Residence, Windsor Castle, 1841), Volume:12 (1 July 1841–31 December 1841), 39–41 (pp. 39–40). Version: Princess Beatrice’s copies, http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org [accessed 17 September 2013]. 68 69

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a convert from Judaism, hence apparently a perfect choice, given the Protestant millennial belief in the urgency of cultivating Jewish converts, especially as it was thought such people would have the zeal and cultural knowledge to convert others. This intellectual, political and economic environment was a catalyst for archaeological investigations to be undertaken in the Holy Land, leading to the establishment of the PEF. The reasons for these explorations were varied and complex and their impact on the British public, and particularly British artists, was quite profound. However British interest in Palestine long pre-dated the establishment of the PEF. In 1801 prominent British geographer Edward Daniel Clarke arrived in Acre, and in seventeen days he produced one of the most comprehensive archaeological accounts produced on Palestine to date. Clark was a scientist who travelled in search of new discoveries and knowledge but he still drew on Christian associations, saying that his aim was to investigate ‘“all those places rendered remarkable by the life and actions of Jesus Christ”’.71 When Clarke reached Palestine he explained that he ‘“came not in an age of credulity, though sufficiently a believer”’.72 Clarke’s beliefs led him to apply reason to his explorations, while still seeking places of historical significance in the life of Christ.73

Visiting Palestine To understand the interest in visual representations of the Holy Land it is helpful to realise some of the broader factors which stimulated interest and led to increasing ease of travelling in the region for a broader British demographic than ever before. During the 1830s about forty travel books a year were written about the Holy Land and handbooks continued to be written about Palestine and the surrounding region throughout the following decades. The first British guidebook to Egypt was A Handbook for Travellers in Egypt (1847) by John Gardner Wilkinson, a book Hunt said he read. The first guidebook for the Holy Land was A Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine (1858).74 The Prince of Wales used both  Clarke in Silberman, p. 19.  Clarke in Shepherd, p. 17. 73  Shepherd, p. 17. 74  Badr El Hage, ‘A tour in the East’, in Cairo to Constantinople: Francis Bedford’s photographs of the Middle East, written by Sophie Gordon with contributions by Badr El Hage and Alessandro Nassini (London: Royal Collection Trust), 36–53 (pp. 38–39). 71 72

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handbooks during his 1862 tour and he referred to them in his journal.75 The establishment of the British Protectorate in Egypt and the expansion of steamship travel made the area much more accessible for British travellers. In 1835 the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company began traversing the eastern Mediterranean and in 1840 the introduction of steamships to Alexandria cut journey times. New roads were constructed, more hotels built and the Anglo-Ottoman trade conventions of 1838 reduced tariffs.76 In 1869 the Suez Canal opened and this canal also made travel easier although it was primarily of great strategic, economic and political importance as a crucial route to India. All these factors, plus the proliferation of travel and guidebooks, contributed to rapid increase in popular demand for images of biblical Near Eastern and Greek sites, as well as depictions of contemporary local life.77 There is considerable evidence that many British travellers to the Holy Land and its surrounds were interested in the intertwined aspects of religion, history, politics and science which were being played out there. It was through Thomas Cook’s entrepreneurial initiatives as founder of the hugely successful travel company that many Victorians were able to view the Near East first hand through company-organised tours, beginning with the 1869 tour up the Nile conducted by Cook himself. In 1876 he published Cook’s Tourist Handbook for Palestine and Syria in which he incorporated Bible references and material from theologians, archaeologists and explorers such as Stanley, Robinson, Warren and Wilson. Cook had been a Baptist preacher and had an eye on both religious and commercial possibilities in the region.78 Echoing Thompson’s patriotic sentiments at the inauguration of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Cook wrote of the Holy Land, The first impressions of childhood are connected with that scenery; and infant lips in England’s prosperous homes pronounce with reverence the names of forlorn Jerusalem and Galilee. We still experience a sort of patriotism for Palestine, and feel that the scenes enacted there were performed for

 El Hage, p. 245, footnote 1.  El Hage, p. 38. 77  El Hage, pp. 38–39. 78  Simon Coleman, ‘From the Sublime to the Meticulous: Art, Anthropology and Victorian Pilgrimage to Palestine’, History and Anthropology, 13 (4), November 2002, 275–290, (p. 275). 75 76

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the whole family of man. Narrow as are its boundaries, we have all a share in its possession. What a church is to a city, Palestine is to the world.79

Cook’s statement, like that of Thompson, is underpinned by a religious vision of an inextricable link between Christian Britain and the Holy Land. Cook, however, extended this idea further. For him, as the physical and historical place of Judaeo-Christian revelation, the Holy Land is the nexus for the world’s Christians, who are the spiritual inheritors of God’s promise to Abraham. In 1868 Cook wrote, ‘It would be a glorious thing for all ministers and students of divinity to visit the lands from which they draw so much of their pulpit inspirations’.80 Although Thompson’s words at the inauguration of the PEF were full of religious and patriotic allusions, the stated aim of the PEF was to facilitate a scientific investigation of ‘the Archaeology, Geography, Geology, and Natural History of Palestine’. In 1870 the Palestine Exploration Society was formed in America and its justification for the exploration of Palestine was specifically through reference to the Bible. This is different from the multiple motivations of the British organisation. Davis argues, ‘The British PEF used the biblical connection as a fund-raising technique, but it was never presented as the primary focus of inquiry’. The region to be explored by the PEF was, of course, politically contentious and of crucial strategic and military significance to Britain and her Empire. Whilst the PEF was sponsored for religious reasons, it had its context in imperial ventures. The Ottoman Empire was crumbling and Britain, France and Russia saw opportunities to gain greater influence and control of strategic sites and trade routes of great importance. Britain’s presence in biblical archaeology was one activity which enabled an increasing imperial presence in the contested strategic regions.81 Prime Minister Disraeli’s 1875 purchase gave Britain control of nearly half the shares in the Suez Canal Company, thus securing the trade route to India. As previously mentioned, the purchase was enabled by a loan of four million pounds from the Jewish investment banker Baron Lionel de Rothschild.82 79  Thomas Cook, Cook’s Tourists’ Handbook for Palestine and Syria (1876) (London: Thomas Cook and Son, 1876), p. 48. 80  J.  G. Davies, Pilgrimage yesterday and today: why? where? how? (London: SCM Press, 1988), p. 148. 81  Silberman, p. 4. 82  The Rothschild Archive, ‘Lionel de Rothschild and the Suez Canal’, The Rothschild Archive [Accessed 8 January 2016] (para. 4 of 5).

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In 1883 the Egypt Exploration Fund was founded by the British to challenge French domination of research in Egypt. Its stated objective was ‘to organize excavations in Egypt with a view to the elucidation of the History and Arts of Ancient Egypt and the illustration of the Old Testament narrative, so far as it has to do with Egypt and the Egyptians; also to explore sites connected with Greek history or with the antiquities of the Coptic Church.’83 Reference to the Old Testament and the Christian church of Egypt suggests an interest in the Bible in this research. For many British Christians the sciences of geology and biology seemed to threaten their faith but the new science of archaeology had the potential to prove the truth of biblical narrative. However, while some British Protestants of the time might have expected that an opening up of Palestine for travel and exploration would provide evidence for the truths of their scriptural faith, this proved to be problematic, especially when for some biblical literalists the point of scriptural geography was solely polemical.84 Scientific ‘truth’ and religious ‘truth’ were not always seen to be the same thing and to further compound the challenge, scientific recording and the presentation of images as a catalyst for religious experience through vicarious observation both involved the visual, and the role of images had always been problematic for Protestants.85 Since the Reformation religious images had been associated with Catholic ritual and the cults of saints, neither of which accorded with Protestant teachings of unmediated access to spiritual truth through the reading of scripture. Paintings certainly could not become objects of veneration, even if they depicted holy places. Furthermore, in order to reconcile Protestant belief with the historical legacy of pilgrimage, it was necessary to redefine the meaning of pilgrimage and the place of Palestine in the life of faith. The medieval pilgrimages to Palestine, exemplified by the great crusades, were strongly identified with Catholic devotional practices, whereas Protestant John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) demonstrated the belief that the true pilgrimage was an inner, spiritual one, not a physical journey to a geographical location.86 For the Catholic or Orthodox traveller to the Holy Land the focus 83  Thomas W. Davis, Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 27, 28. 84  Aiken, p. 27. 85  Coleman, ‘From the Sublime to the Meticulous’, p. 276. 86  Thomas W. Davis, p. 17.

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was on pilgrimage to holy sites invested with sacramental significance; for the Protestant it was to experience the landscapes through which Jesus and his disciples walked, to trace the biblical narratives and to be physically positioned where Jesus once stood. Silberman argues similarly that the solution to the dilemma of how to view the Holy Land with its history of pilgrimage to sacred shrines was for the Protestant world to ‘transform the land of the Bible into a metaphor’.87 Nevertheless, I argue this view was held in tension with the Protestant emphasis on personal experience and the desire to walk where Jesus walked. The visual depiction of biblical narratives and the depiction of sites believed to have been visited by Jesus inspired many believers who had a newfound desire to understand more about the historical Jesus. They sought representations which would aid their contemplation and hence enhance their personal spiritual journeys. Many Victorian artists, driven by either personal piety, or an astute reading of the art market, or both, sought to explore a distinct aesthetic and to develop a visual vocabulary to capture these subjects for a Protestant Britain keen to engage with the life and environment of the historical Jesus. The notion that Palestine in the nineteenth century had not changed since the first century was one of the reasons many late twentieth and early twenty-first century scholars have condemned these British Christians as depending on an imperialist and Western ‘eye’. Such scholars conclude that this attitude led to a lack of interest in, and respect for, the reality of the Near Eastern societies of their own time. This generalisation is highly problematic, however, when assessed against a range of written and visual sources.

 Silberman, p. 9.

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CHAPTER 3

Holy Land and British Perceptions

Some of the key themes and significant issues which dominated mid-­ nineteenth-­century British thinking can be explored through the Holy Land journeys of David Roberts. A broad range of the artistic, economic, religious and personal factors motivated Roberts to embark on his Near Eastern journey and that contributed to the popular success of his consequent artworks. David Roberts was a Scottish Presbyterian born in 1796. He travelled to the Near East in 1838 when Hunt was still a child. Roberts died in 1864, having produced his momentous work The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia between 1842 and 1849. As part of the pre-publication publicity for these lithographs, the publisher Francis Graham Moon and Roberts organised a private viewing of selected watercolours and drawings from Roberts’s journey for Queen Victoria, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London. Each of these influential people subscribed to the series and Queen Victoria’s endorsement of the project enabled Roberts to dedicate the first volumes to her. Exhibitions of selected sketches were held in London, Edinburgh and several other major cities in Britain resulting in positive critical reception and many further subscriptions.1

1  Debra N. Mancoff, David Roberts: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land (San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, 1999), p. 110.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. M. Burritt, Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41261-6_3

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The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia was acclaimed as an accurate topographical record of the region and evidence suggests the lithographs helped to shape British views of the Biblical lands for decades. Yet, having been trained as a set designer for theatre, Roberts could not resist adjusting scale and light to create the dramatic effects and mood he desired in his depiction of ruins and buildings. This tendency translated into many of the oil paintings he subsequently made throughout his life from the multitude of sketches he brought back from the Holy Land. His painting of the Sphinx in The Approach of the Simoon (Appendix Fig. A.2) was one such work adjusted for aesthetic effect. Hunt criticised the painting as lacking veracity but Charles Dickens, for whom it was painted, praised it as ‘a poetical conception’.2 When a dinner was organised in Edinburgh in October 1842 to honour Roberts, Ballantine, Roberts’s friend and biographer, wrote a song for the occasion, Scotland’s Painter Davie, which included the lines, Leonardos sel’, ayont the moon, Saw nought to Painter Davie. True Scripture lair had fired his breast, His brain began to work like yeast, And aff he set to see the East, Whaur reigned his namesake Davie. Through a’ the Holy Land he flew, And wi’ his faithfu’ pencil drew Ilk towering fane, and sparkling view, To tell the track o’ Davie.3

In this song Ballantine clearly suggests that Roberts’s main inspiration was the Bible. In 1866, in his concluding remarks to The Life of David Roberts, R.A., Ballantine wrote that by then the Holy Land had been ‘thoroughly explored’ but that Roberts ‘was the first and the greatest

2  Briony Llewellyn, ‘Roberts’s Pictures of the Near East’, in David Roberts, compiled by Helen Guiterman and Briony Llewellyn (Oxford and London: Phaidon Press and Barbican Art Gallery, 1986), pp. 77, 89. 3  Ballantine in David Roberts, the Life of David Roberts, R.A., ed. by James Ballantine, (Milton Keynes, UK: Lightning Source UK, 2013), p.  53; Katharine Sim, David Roberts R.A., 1796–1864: A Biography (London: Quartet Books, 1984), p. 224.

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artistic pioneer who had opened up that sacred country to our ken’ and that the journey ‘had been the dream of his boyhood, and the great end and aim of his manhood’.4

Roberts’s Holy Land To understand the personal factors that motivated Roberts and the earlier experiences that moulded his artistic technique, sense of composition and choice of subject, it is necessary to consider his early life, both personally and professionally. It is also important to be aware of the cultural and religious contexts which were formative in Roberts’s activities, behaviours and professed intentions. To do this, Roberts’s journey to the Near East and the art works he produced whilst there and immediately upon his return need to be contextualised in relation to the dominant theological discourses at the time and the ideology and practice of contemporaneous Near Eastern archaeology. When Roberts travelled there the British relationship to Palestine was ambiguous, with an often apparently unconscious tension between belief in a religion which was Near Eastern in origin, a reverence for the Holy Land as a place where the historical Jesus lived, theologies of a heavenly Jerusalem and a view of the contemporary reality of the region as totally alien and sometimes decadent and degraded. Explorations of the Near East which led to the development of biblical archaeology originated in ‘the pilgrim impulse’.5 A more complex discussion of the nature and role of pilgrimage in British Protestant thinking is that provided by Bar-Yosef. As already shown, in relation to the construction of British Christian identity, the metaphorical and geographical Holy Land is a complex place. Bar-Yosef argues that the seventeenth century saw a significant shift away from mediaeval attitudes to pilgrimage, about which he says few people could actually afford to journey to Jerusalem.6 Bar-Yosef uses Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) as an exemplar of the new attitude to the Holy Land with its portrayal of the devout Christian life as a journey to Zion, writing, ‘repealing the physical pilgrimage, emphasising the posthumous rewards  Ballantine in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 77.  Thomas W. Davis, Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 3. 6  Eitan Bar-Yosef, The Holy Land in English Culture 1799–1917: Palestine and the question of Orientalism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 24. 4 5

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of the New Jerusalem, and disseminating the Bible in the vernacular—the Reformation drew believers away from the earthly Jerusalem’. Instead of being a physical and geographical destination the land became a metaphor. Bar-Yosef develops an analysis in which he examines ‘the cultural process of internalizing the scriptural geography and re-imagining it in, or as, England’.7 Conversely, however, experience of the physical place was crucial to Roberts’s endeavour and on several occasions in the Holy Land he came upon scenes which reminded him of the English countryside or English villages. In the context of specific journal entries, however, it is difficult to know whether Roberts sees any spiritual or metaphorical dimensions to these musings, or whether he is simply becoming homesick as his journey continues. Whilst it is not always clear throughout his journey the extent to which he believed the literal or spiritual truth of various Bible stories, Roberts’s writing suggests a literal understanding of the great salvation event of the Hebrew scriptures, an historical Exodus. Comments he made whilst travelling through the biblical lands indicate this: ‘the wilderness of Sinai, where the Israelites were condemned to wander for forty years’, ‘here the multitude of Israelites were miraculously preserved, while their pursuers were engulphed (sic) in the waters’.8 And, on observing a huge procession of people and camels, ‘recalling vividly the children of Israel bearing the ark through the wilderness’.9

Protestant Worship and the Holy Land According to his own writing, the physical journey Roberts undertook was inspired by his familiarity with Bible stories learnt from his early childhood. For Bible-based Christians such as Roberts, the Holy Land and most particularly Jerusalem, gained their meaning from the events the Old and New Testaments told them took place there. While Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress exemplified the approach of inner pilgrimage, many poems, prayers and hymns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also focused on the spiritual Holy Land. Congregational hymn singing was a distinctive mark of Protestant worship, particularly the style of worship with which both Roberts and Wilkie were familiar. There were, however, differing  Bar-Yosef, p. 19.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 41. 9  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 39. 7 8

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views regarding the appropriate words for congregational hymns, with strict Calvinists adhering to the position that only hymns with words taken directly from the Bible were acceptable for use in worship. According to Calvinism Scripture is the only rule of faith, the Bible contains all that one needs to know to guide one’s relationship with God and other people. ‘The authority of scripture is assured by the “testimonium Spiritus Sancti”, an interior persuasion whereby we can distinguish the canonical Books of Scripture from others.’10 While the earthly city of Jerusalem is of fundamental importance in Judaism and has many sites made holy for Christians by the presence of Jesus, ultimately Christian hope focuses on a heavenly and eternal city, not a physical human one.11 This relationship is exemplified in the allegory of Pilgrim’s Progress, in which, through frequent references to the biblical Exodus story, Bunyan ‘refines the analogy between the Christian spiritual life and the Israelites’ journey from Egypt’.12 Bar-Yosef argues that while Bunyan mentions specific places, such as Sinai and Jerusalem, he sees the Holy Land as a metaphor, even in the Bible. Therefore he can denote Christian’s destination as ‘Heaven’, ‘Heavenly Country’, the ‘Celestial City’, the ‘Paradise of God’ and the ‘heavenly Jerusalem’, as well as ‘City of Zion’, ‘Mount Zion’, the ‘Land that flows with Milk and Honey’ and the ‘Promised Land’. Eventually Zion means only eschatological city.13 This interpretation is grounded in biblical passages such as Galatians 4.25–6, ‘Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother’, and Hebrews 11.13–16, ‘All of these died in faith without having received the promises … they were strangers and foreigners on the earth … seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.’14 This perception of Jerusalem is summed up in the words of many hymns popular for congregational singing in Dissenting and Evangelical Anglican 10  Cross F.L., ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 223. 11  Robert Wilken, The land called holy: Palestine in Christian history and thought (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), p. xii. 12  Bar-Yosef, p. 20. 13  Bar-Yosef, p. 20. 14  Bar-Yosef, p. 21.

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churches. Titles such as Jerusalem the golden (Urbs Sion Aurea) (1146 translated into English in 1858), Lights abode, celestial Salem (1854), Jerusalem on high (1664), Jerusalem my happy home (1795), Blessed city, heavenly Salem (1851), O heavenly Jerusalem (1839), O Jerusalem the blissful (1889) and Ye choirs of new Jerusalem (1850) convey a belief in the glorious and transcendent city of the biblical book of Revelation. The hymn O come, O come Emmanuel (Anon., Latin c. 13th cent. Tr. John Mason Neale 1818–66) is particularly interesting as an assertion of the relationship between God’s ancient people of Israel and Christian redemption. O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear, Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. O come, O come, thou Lord of might Who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height In ancient times didst give the law In cloud and majesty and awe. O come, thou key of David, come, and open wide our heavenly home; … O come, thou rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan’s tyranny ….15

Likewise, the hymn Glorious things of thee are spoken (words John Newton, 1725–1807), asserts the fundamental link between Zion as the city of God and as the city of Christians redeemed by grace. It includes the lines: Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God; He whose word cannot be broken formed thee for his own abode ….

15  The Proprietors of Hymns Ancient and Modern, Hymns Ancient and Modern Standard Edition (London: Williams and Sons, 1924), p. 37.

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Saviour, since of Zion’s city I through grace a member am ….16

Whilst the Bible, rather than church tradition, held pre-eminent authority for Protestants, the complex and diverse views of the Church Fathers regarding pilgrimage to Jerusalem had penetrated the Christian consciousness. An analysis of these often intricate theological positions is outside the parameters of this volume but some broad points can be made to illuminate some of the views on which later British positions were based. Wilken notes that Hebrews 12.22, ‘You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem’, was interpreted by Origen in the third century as referring to ‘a spiritual vision of heavenly bliss’, not a future earthly place. He interprets Galatians 4.26 in the same way.17 By contrast, in the second century both Irenaeus and Tertullian saw these two passages as indicating a future Jerusalem on earth.18 In his fifth-century Letter 47.2 Jerome wrote, ‘To worship on the spot where the feet of the Lord once stood is part of the faith’. Nonetheless, in Letters 46 and 58 Jerome expresses views which appear to be contradictory, as he argues strongly in support of pilgrimage to Palestine and then argues against it.19 Jerome also comments that the Gospel of Christ has spread widely outside Palestine and he asserts ‘Happy is he … who carries within his heart the Cross, the Resurrection, the place of the Nativity, and the place of the Ascension’.20 In the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa strongly denied any connection between the physical Palestine and the Christian faith.21 He talked about the risen and ascended Christ who is with all believers in all parts of the world and therefore cannot be confined to a particular physical place.22 However Bitton-Ashkelony argues that, rather than debating the religious value of Holy Land sites, Gregory is rejecting claims to ecclesiastical power based on ‘religious geography’.23 Bar-Yosef argues that  The Proprietors of Hymns Ancient and Modern, p. 474.  Wilken, p. 70. 18  Wilken, p. 70. 19  Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Encountering the Sacred: the debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2005), p. 70. 20  Bitton-Ashkelony, p. 93. 21  Bitton-Ashkelony, p. 62. 22  Bitton-Ashkelony, pp. 55–56. 23  Bitton-Ashkelony, p. 63. 16 17

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ultimately, since the destruction of monasteries and traditional sacred pilgrimage sites, English Protestants continued ‘the internalization of the Holy Land, this time reallocating the pilgrimage … to one’s soul’.24

Roberts’s Contribution to the Understanding of the Holy Land Thus by the nineteenth century, many British Protestants saw pilgrimage as an inner spiritual journey, rather than as a physical journey to the shrines associated since mediaeval times with Catholicism. Now however, inspired by contemporary religious writing and the development of biblical archaeology, they began to think again of the spiritual benefit of literal journeys, not to traditional shrines, but to the places where the Bible told them Jesus actually lived and enacted his ministry. This imitatio Christi was a journey of spiritual development.25 Harriet Martineau (1847), British writer, intellectual and Unitarian, while critical of many religious practices and beliefs, wrote of her journey to Jerusalem ‘at every step we found the scriptural imagery rising up before our eyes. … These places have been familiar to my mind’s eye from my youth up: and now I looked at the ground they occupied, amidst scenery but little changed, with an emotion which none but those who have made the Bible the study of the best years of their life can conceive of.’26 As Long observes, ‘Like the primal scriptural word, or the Word itself (God in Christ), the Bible land itself offered a self-authenticating personal experience of God, which since Martin Luther had justified the privileged authority Protestants gave to individual conscience in matters of religion’.27 For the Protestant Christian faith experience and a commitment of the heart were the ground of piety. Such thinking was aided by the many written lives of Jesus and the proliferation of prints, paintings, dioramas and, later in the century, photographs, of the Holy Land. Roberts’s lithographs, published in The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia, were to be a significant contribution to British and European visualisation of the region.  Bar-Yosef, p. 27.  J.  G. Davies, Pilgrimage yesterday and today: why? where? how? (London: SCM Press, 1988), p. 201. 26  J. G. Davies, p. 142. 27  Burke O. Long, Imaging the Holy Land, Maps, Models and Fantasy Travels (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 107. 24 25

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Another significant influence came from new approaches to critical exegesis of biblical text which often called into question traditional interpretations of places and events as historical occurrences. In an attempt to find physical evidence to counter such doubts, there was an impetus for the development of the new science of archaeology in the Holy Land. It was initially seen as a means to support an historical approach to biblical exegesis and to produce biblical typologies and chronologies which would establish the historical accuracy of the Bible.28 Roberts’s training as a theatre set designer and his focus on architectural subjects led him to an interest in the discoveries of archaeology throughout his travels. He frequently depicted ruins and sites of significance to his archaeological contemporaries. The traditional motive for European exploration remained too, the search for antiquities. However, significantly, when Roberts writes about antiquities, such as he does when visiting Rameh, Jaffa and Sidon, he generally means ancient sites, not collectible material artefacts.

The Rise of Archaeology The scene for growing archaeological interest in the Near East had initially been set by Napoleon’s 1798–99 expedition to Egypt. After Napoleon’s defeat many British officers, who regularly called at Palestinian ports for supplies, visited holy sites which they wrote about or illustrated in their journals. These depictions and the ‘patriotic feeling’ resulting from British victory over the French stimulated British public interest in the lands of the Bible.29 This also ultimately contributed to a public interest in artworks such as those of Roberts. British interest in imperial expansion and the discovery of new trade routes and natural resources had led to the establishment of societies to explore Africa, Asia and the Pacific and, in 1804, a small group of wealthy Englishmen met in London to form a private organisation, the Palestine Association, for the exploration of the Holy Land.30 In 1809 John Lewis Burckhardt, a Swiss student of Edward Daniel Clarke at Cambridge, explored ruins and copied ancient inscriptions in Aleppo and Damascus. Clarke was a Church of England 28  Ann E.  Killebrew, Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: an archaeological study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and early Israel, 1300–1100 B.C.E (Atlanta, Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), p. 3. 29  Silberman, Neil Asher, Digging for God and Country—Exploration, Archaeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land 1799–1917 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 18. 30  Silberman, p. 21.

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clergyman, traveller and Professor of Mineralogy. He travelled in Egypt and Palestine and, in 1819, was a founder of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, established ‘for the purpose of promoting scientific inquiry’. Burckhardt wrote to Clarke, ‘no English traveller has yet made his appearance in these parts since the peace with Turkey; the moment is as favourable now as it will ever be.’31 The Palestine Association published an English translation of a journal written by another Swiss explorer, Seetzen, entitled A Brief account of the Countries Adjoining the Lake of Tiberias, the Jordan, and the Dead Sea. This account introduced Hauran, Bashan, Gilead and Moab to the British public, places about which they had read in their Bibles.32 British explorer James Silk Buckingham was confident that Burckhardt’s route from the Sea of Galilee to the Gulf of Aqaba had inadvertently revealed a new trade route. In reality, one of the most powerful motivators for Near Eastern exploration was to facilitate access to routes which would provide commercial advantage for Britain. Intense interest in Palestine was continuing to grow in England as knowledge of these explorations spread and people were encouraged to travel to Palestine to see what they ‘might find for the honour of their nation’.33

Images of the Holy Land The Holy Land continued to capture the British imagination and to inspire both piety and imperial aspiration. One important publication which caught the public interest was W. and E.  Finden’s 1836 edition, Landscape Illustrations of the Bible to which Roberts contributed drawings to be reproduced as etchings, although he had not at this stage visited the Holy Land. As was common practice at the time, Roberts relied on the available sketches done by travellers and adventurers such as Frederick Catherwood who, in 1833, wearing Egyptian dress, managed to spend six weeks drawing and surveying the interior of the Dome of the Rock and the Muslim life of Jerusalem. Catherwood used the technique of the camera lucida to create accurate depictions of the scenes he viewed.34 In 1836,  Silberman, p. 22.  Silberman, p. 22. 33  Silberman, p. 23. 34  Catherwood is best known for his later records of the ancient Mayan civilisation of Central America. 31 32

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the impresario Robert Burford had Catherwood’s Palestinian sketches reproduced on a large scale in London to create the ‘Panorama of Jerusalem’ at which Catherwood provided a live commentary. The ten thousand square foot display was visited in its first season by more than 140,000 people, an indication of the developing popular interest in Palestine which was to continue throughout the nineteenth century.35 Soon after, Roberts spent a significant part of 1838 and 1839 producing images in the Holy Land, the time when the first British Consulate was established in Jerusalem.

Diversity in the Churches The final contextual element to consider before embarking on an analysis of Roberts’s journey and artworks, and later those of Wilkie, relates to the religious culture in which they lived. For both artists the Protestant emphasis on experiential faith was important and both thought it crucial to experience the lands of the Bible if they were to depict them for the British faithful. Whilst waiting to enter Jerusalem, Roberts wrote in his Journal, ‘I cannot overcome the longing desire I have to see the great city’.36 The decade of the 1830s, at the end of which Roberts visited the Holy Land, saw major controversies over the literal authenticity of the Bible. Interpretation of scripture was to be a dominant theme throughout the nineteenth century and, as we have already seen, it was a significant factor in archaeological exploration of the Bible lands. It was also a decade of momentous scientific and intellectual ideas, notably the publication of Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830–33) and developments in the study of newly translated ancient languages such as Old Persian. Both these areas of scholarly endeavour had the potential to question a literal interpretation of the Bible. During the 1830s biblical scholarship also had to address new theories which disputed traditional beliefs about the authorship and historical context of the Bible.37 Strauss’s The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, published in Germany in 1835, and Hennell’s Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity, published in England in 1838, were examples of such works which applied a new scientific critical exegetical method to understanding the Bible. At the same time, in a  Naomi Shepherd, The Zealous Intruders (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 76.  Roberts in David Roberts, From an antique land: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land, ed. by Barbara Culliford (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), p. 119. 37  Shepherd, p. 77. 35 36

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contradictory approach, the Tractarians were attempting to return to the early Church Fathers for guidance in their interpretation of scriptural passages.38 From 1833 to 1841, members of the Tractarian or Oxford Movement in the Church of England produced ninety Tracts for the Times, writings which were to have far reaching significance because they focused on the authority of the Church and its traditions and challenged the assumed Protestant nature of the established Church. In the last tract John Henry Newman controversially interpreted the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England as aligning with much Roman Catholic doctrine. In a political, as well as religious context, that needed to acknowledge strong Dissenting voices, the truly significant Tractarian challenge to the Established Church was the argument that the essential identity of the Church of England was Catholic, not Protestant.39 The catalyst for the conception of the Oxford Movement was ostensibly a political decision, another clear example of the interconnectedness of religion and politics at the time. In 1833, John Keble, Professor of Poetry at Oxford and author of the popular 1827 publication, The Christian Year, preached a sermon in which he challenged the recent decision of the Whig Government to rationalise dioceses in the Church of Ireland. The government saw The Irish Church Temporalities Act as a sensible redistribution of resources, but to many High Churchmen it was a sign of inexcusable interference in the organisation of the Established Church. The Whig Government included those of Radical and Dissenting beliefs40 and many in the Established Church felt that a precedent had been set for government interference in the Established Church in England as well as in Ireland. Roberts, a member of a Dissenting Scottish church, supported the Whig position but, while taking a strong interest in British politics, did not participate directly in political actions. Once when considering political developments in Britain, Roberts wrote from Cairo, ‘“But with politics they say we artists have nothing to do. With all my heart be it so.”’41 38  Lindsay Errington, Social and Religious Themes in English Art 1840–1860 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1984), pp. 253, 453. 39  Gerald Parsons, ‘Reform, Revival and Realignment: The Experience of Victorian Anglicanism’, in Religion in Victorian Britain. Volume I: Traditions, ed. by Gerald Parsons (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 14–66 (p. 31). 40  Parsons, ‘Reform, Revival and Realignment’, Vol. I, p. 30. 41  J Harris Proctor, ‘David Robert and the ideology of imperialism’, The Muslim World, 88, 1 (1998), pp. 47–66 (p. 48).

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British Christian View of Jews Nineteenth-century British engagement with the Holy Land had many facets: religious, strategic, political and economic. One aspect which cannot be ignored is the attitude towards Jews and the notion of a Jewish homeland. I will say more about this in the discussion of Hunt’s involvement in the proto-Zionist debates of his time and the diverse references to Jews in the writing and visual images produced by Roberts and Wilkie. Also to be considered is the extent to which their attitudes with regard to these issues were shaped by broader societal opinion and personal experience and, indeed, the extent to which their depictions shaped public perceptions. As their conversion and return to the Holy Land was seen by some Christians as having eschatological significance, focused missionary work was directed towards Jews in Britain and Palestine.42 Conversion of Jews was seen as a priority, and indeed a responsibility, for Evangelical Protestant Christians. Regardless of this view about the need for conversion, in the context of debates about the civil and political rights of Jews in Britain, in 1833 William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, stated that Jews ‘shone forth in ancient times, like a light in the firmament, proclaiming the attributes of the Creator, and the hope of a redeemer to a benighted world’.43 Yet practising Jews could not sit in the British House of Commons until 1858.44 Belief in the idea of the return of a converted remnant of Israel from exile was based on an interpretation of Romans 9.27, ‘And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, “Though the number of the children of Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved”’.45 Some scholars do not consider Millenarian beliefs as having significant influence on British engagement with the Holy Land, arguing that such views were only important to Evangelical British Christians and some American Protestants. Proponents of this position argue that Millenarian beliefs had no political influence, as Western involvement in the Holy Land was more

 Silberman, p. 29.  Charles Egan in Albert Boime, ‘William Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat: Rite of Forgiveness/Transference of Blame’, Art Bulletin, LXXXIV, 1 (2002), 94–114 (p. 100). 44  Simon Montefiore, Jerusalem: the biography (London: Orion Books, 2012), p. 420. 45  Shepherd, p.  228; Bible: The New Revised Standard Version (Nashville, Tennessee: Catholic Bible Press, a division of Thomas Nelson, 1993). 42 43

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about Christian revival, commerce and domination over Islam.46 There were also some missionary attempts to convert Orthodox believers to Protestant Christianity. In 1810, the committee of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (LJS) announced that it ‘wished to distinguish between the restoration of Israel to their own country and the conversion of Israel to Christianity’. In 1823, the leaders of the LJS ‘disclaimed all intention of promulgating any particular views as to the nature of the Millenium (sic), their object being the conversion of the Jews to Christianity’. However by the late 1830s, when Roberts travelled to the Holy Land, the political situation had changed and there were new and powerful supporters of the Society leading to a situation in the Near East which seemed favourable to ‘the extension of the mission in Palestine’.47 Much later, in 1860, in a letter to Ballantine, Roberts, a Mason, though by his own admission ‘a very negligent brother of the ancient craft’, made some intriguing and historically dubious comments about Jews when asked to advise on the decoration of a Masonic Hall. He suggested a depiction of the Temple should be based on the first Temple which there ‘can be no question was in imitation of those in Egypt’. He then wrote of the Jewish reliance on Egyptian and Phoenician designs and workmen saying, ‘Solomon married a daughter of Pharaoh, and all their notions of civilisation, even to their religious ceremonies, were borrowed from Egypt’. The one difference Roberts allows is that, ‘the Jews had no plurality of gods, the Egyptians had’.48

Being Present in the Holy Land Of course not all contemporaries of Roberts’s who visited the Holy Land were Protestant missionaries, explorers or archaeologists. For the Catholic or Orthodox traveller to the region the focus remained pilgrimage to holy sites invested with ritual significance or ecclesiastical authority. For many Protestants it was to experience the landscapes through which Jesus and his disciples walked, to trace the biblical narratives and to experience the emotions of being physically positioned where they believed Jesus once stood. In 1834 British traveller and diplomat Robert Curzon, on first  Shepherd, p. 229.  Shepherd, p. 231. 48  Roberts in David Roberts, the Life of David Roberts, R.A., ed. by James Ballantine (Milton Keynes, UK: Lightning Source UK, 2013), pp. 69–70. 46 47

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seeing Jerusalem, wrote of being unwilling to display his emotions, ‘for fear of being laughed at for my absurdity. … It is not easy to describe the sensations which fill the breast of a Christian when, after a long and toilsome journey, he first beholds this, the most interesting and venerated spot upon the whole surface of the globe. Everyone was silent for a while, absorbed in the deepest contemplation.’49 According to their own writings being physically present in these places was of great importance to Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt. When Roberts made his Holy Land journey he wrote a long descriptive letter from Cairo to his friend Wilkie. His letters tell us that he wished Wilkie could have been with him on his Near Eastern travels. When Wilkie died suddenly in 1841, whilst returning from his own trip to the region, Roberts wrote to his daughter Christine saying, ‘I have not yet recovered … as I cannot help considering myself partly to blame for his leaving England’.50 Wilkie had certainly been inspired by the sketches Roberts produced on his journey. Just before leaving, Wilkie saw Roberts’s drawings when Jewish Royal Academician, Solomon Hart, brought together a group of Oriental travellers and scholars for Wilkie to meet.51 For Wilkie, personal experience and observation of the contemporary Holy Land and its ancient sites were essential to produce an artistic witness to faith. The challenge was how to create a distinctly Protestant iconography. Regardless of the metaphysical exaltation of Jerusalem, Western eyes often saw the actual earthly city very differently from these celestial visions. When American biblical scholar Edward Robinson visited Jerusalem in 1838 he wrote that the American missionaries in Jerusalem, ‘had come up with their families, like the Hebrews of old, at the time of the Passover, to worship in this place’.52 He observed that ‘of all the oriental cities which it was my lot to visit, Jerusalem, after Cairo, is the cleanest and most solidly built’,53 ‘although if one seeks here, or elsewhere in the east, for the general cleanliness and thrift which characterize many cities of Europe and

 J. G. Davies, p. 142.  Katharine Sim, David Roberts R.A., 1796–1864: A Biography (London: Quartet Books, 1984), p. 217. 51  Nicholas Tromans, David Wilkie: The People’s Painter (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd, 2007), p. 214, footnote 126. 52  Edward Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine and the adjacent regions, Vol. 1, 1838 (London: John Murray, 1856), p. 222. 53  Robinson, Vol. I, p. 222. 49 50

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America, he will of course seek in vain.’54 On Sunday 15 April 1838 Easter Day coincided for ‘Romish’ and ‘Oriental’ churches and Robinson wrote, ‘the annual mockery of the Greek holy fire had taken place just before we entered the city. The Latins too had enacted their mummery, representing the scenes of the crucifixion.’ Robinson and his party arrived after the events of Holy Week and he wrote, ‘This however we counted as no loss, but rather a gain; for the object of our visit was the city itself, in relation to its ancient renown and religious associations; not as seen in its present state of decay and superstitious or fraudful degradation.’55 Importantly, Robinson is speaking of ‘decay’ and ‘fraud’ attributable to his fellow Christians. It is the practices of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches in the Holy City which so offend his American Protestant sensibilities.

Christian Diversity in Jerusalem The more religiously open minded Protestant, David Roberts, was in Jerusalem for Palm Sunday in 1839, the year after Robinson and he wrote of splendid processions, in which the Greek Christians took precedence; and led by their bishops, they walked three times round the Sepulchre, bearing branches of palm in commemoration of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. The bishops, ascending the steps to the altar, blessed the multitude. A plenteous supply of holy water was distributed, and flowers were strewn on the steps leading to the Sepulchre. Other Christian sects followed, all animated by sincere veneration.56

Unlike Robinson, Roberts does not appear to harbour any sectarian prejudices, but rather looks beyond ritual actions and is impressed by what he perceives to be sincerity of faith and practice. Clearly there was much tension between the various Christian denominations in Jerusalem, some about ecclesiology and some about temporal authority. The parallel motivations of religion and contemporary politics continued to influence British thinking about the region. In her Journal Queen Victoria wrote in 1841, ‘Dr Short dined, & Ld Melbourne sat next  Robinson, Vol. I, p. 223.  Robinson, Vol. I, p. 223. 56  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 45. 54 55

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to me. We talked of … Guizot’s 57 expatiating on the idea of making Jerusalem a Christian City, guaranteed by the 5 Powers, a strange idea, & one which Ld Melbourne fours (sic) would catch on with “our English saints” & religious enthusiasts, &c.’58 The lack of a distinct British constituency in Jerusalem led to the 1841 establishment of the joint British Prussian Protestant bishopric, as there was ongoing political concern about the alliances between France and the Roman Catholics of the Holy Land and Russia and the Orthodox.

Roberts as Artist and Holy Land Traveller Having indicated some key religious and intellectual ideas of the time, we have a context in which to consider why David Roberts, the son of a Scottish shoemaker, travelled and sketched in the Holy Land at such a significant time and what factors led him to achieve his stated aim of producing the most comprehensive visual record of the region. Roberts’s early artistic training, his religious family upbringing and his travels in Europe culminated in his trip to the Holy Land. Roberts is recorded as writing that his parents ‘moved in a very humble sphere of life, but by unwearied industry and frugality maintained and educated their family’.59 From a young age Roberts showed an interest in, and facility for, drawing. In his Journal he recalls an incident when his mother was horrified to think that he had stolen a banknote, only to discover it was a clever copy he had made. On several occasions the young Roberts had the opportunity to see the decorated caravans of visiting shows which included ‘wild beasts’ and on returning home, he drew these images on the white-washed kitchen wall with a burned stick so that his mother could see what the animals were like.60 The Roberts’s family lived in the village of Stockbridge near Edinburgh. Roberts described the villagers as ‘somewhat primitive’ and says his devout

57  Francois Guizot was French Ambassador to London and Foreign Minister 1840–47 and Prime Minister of France September 1847–February 1848. 58  HRH Victoria: Journal entry: Sunday 10 January 1841. Place of writing: Principal Residence Windsor Castle. Number of page images:2 Version: Princess Beatrice’s copies Volume:11 (1st January 1841–30th June 1841), Volume Page number(s):(12)–13). [accessed 17 September 2013] 59  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 2. 60  Ballantine in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 2.

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mother referred to them as ‘a godless race’.61 Three of Roberts’s four siblings died very young. He wrote that his parents ‘were strictly religious, and on the Sabbath days our family turned out regularly to church, tidily and well dressed’. Roberts was apprenticed for seven years to the house painter Gavin Beugo and this training enabled him to develop his skills of draughtsmanship, as well as developing his interest in architecture. This technical skill and subject matter preference are key in Roberts’s later Holy land images. When his apprenticeship finished Roberts went to work painting scenes for Bannister’s circus, about which he wrote that being a scene painter was, ‘at that time the highest object of my ambition; for my knowledge of art was chiefly derived from the scenery of the Edinburgh Theatre Royal. … I knew little of the ancient and still less of the modern masters.’62 As his skill and reputation developed Roberts went on to paint scenes for the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, Drury Lane and Covent Garden and to see the artworks of great masters in Spain and Italy.

Roberts’s ‘Grand Tour’ Increasingly successful in his career, in 1824 Roberts embarked on a journey through Europe, culminating in a trip through Spain where he saw the grand architecture of the medieval Muslim period. In the same year a writer in the Eclectic Review commented, ‘How times have altered since the tour of Europe, the Grand tour, was the ne plus ultra of gentleman travellers! No one can now pretend to have seen the world who has not made one of a party of pleasure up the Nile or taken a ride on camel back across the Syrian desert.’63 Much has been written about the extent to which Europeans at the time were genuinely interested in experiencing and finding out about the contemporary Near East and the extent to which they preferred to maintain an exotic fantasy of an unchanged and largely imagined place. The popular visual entertainment of the panorama, patented by Edinburgh painter and theatre owner, Robert Barker, frequently depicted Near Eastern scenes. These were sometimes based on sketches done by people such as soldiers who had served in the region but they were rarely the product of journeys made with a specific artistic  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 2.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 4. 63  Mancoff, p. 35. 61 62

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purpose. At the same time Biblical subjects on a grand scale were being painted by artists such as John Martin, who produced The Seventh Plague of Egypt in 1823. Roberts’s 1829 work Departure of the Israelites (Appendix Fig. A.5) was acclaimed by critics and this inspired the 1833 production of the Israelites as a diorama. The previously mentioned significant 1836 publication, Landscape Illustrations of the Bible, included etchings made from drawings by artists including Roberts, although he still had not actually seen these places. Experiences were converging to propel Roberts to make his own journey. Finally in 1838 he went to Egypt, then to Palestine, a defining moment in his life and subsequent artistic oeuvre as he had wanted to visit the Holy Land since he was a child.64 Twin motivations began to emerge, as he desired to be the first professional artist to systematically paint the region and, as a devout Protestant, he was keen to visit the sites of the Bible. Roberts’s letters and Journal support the view that he was genuine in his Christian faith and in his desire to visit the places of the Bible but his piety was certainly not that of a strict Calvinist Presbyterian. It would appear from his records, that in observance of the Christian Sabbath, Roberts did not work on Sundays. This seems to suggest a legacy of his strict Presbyterian upbringing.65 However it is not easy to be sure how much Roberts was influenced by those around him. For example, when he refrained from working on Sunday when in Luxor, he was in the company of two Protestant clergymen and some observant Copts.66

The Politics of the Region Roberts visited the Near East at a time of great political significance for Egypt, Syria, Palestine and the Ottoman Empire. By the 1830s and 1840s the regime in Palestine sought favourable political and economic relations with the West and promoted a more liberal attitude to Western travellers. This relative liberalisation, along with developments in transport and infrastructure, made it considerably easier for Roberts and Wilkie to travel through the land and to paint than had been the case for earlier Western travellers. This political situation was grounded in developments from the final French capitulation and departure of troops from Egypt in 1801  Ballantine in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 77; Sim, p. 114.  Mancoff, p. 57. 66  Sim, p. 145. 64 65

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when Ottoman control was re-established. Mehemet Ali had commanded Albanian troops for the Ottomans against Napoleon and was subsequently made vali of Egypt by Sultan Mahmoud II. In 1824 the Greek rebellion against the Sultan was suppressed by Mehemet Ali and, as a consequence, in 1827 a British, French and Russian alliance destroyed Mehemet Ali’s fleet at the Battle of Navarino and supported Greek independence. Then in 1831 Mehemet Ali conquered Palestine, Syria and most of Turkey, defeating the Sultan. After this the Sultan recognised Mehemet Ali as ruler of Egypt, Arabia and Crete. Mehemet Ali appointed his son, Ibrahim, governor of greater Syria. In 1834 Ibrahim established headquarters in Jerusalem in the compound of David’s Tomb. He initiated significant reforms which promised Jews and Christians equality under the law. He abolished fees paid by Christian pilgrims, allowed them to ride horses and wear Muslim clothes and he revoked the centuries old jizaya tax which had been levied annually on non-Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire. However, although Ibrahim demonstrated a relatively liberal attitude to Jews and Christians in Syria, both he and his father, Mehemet Ali, Turkish-speaking Albanians, detested Arabs. Ibrahim’s father called them ‘“wild beasts”’.67 Here again a reminder that generalisations about the people of the Near East at the time of Roberts’s and Wilkie’s travels can lead to a simplistic analysis of a complex situation and potentially reinforce an unsubstantiated dichotomy between a perceived monolithic West and a perceived monolithic East. Said’s later comments in clarification of his thesis in Orientalism also caution against generalisations about a static and monolithic East. ‘Far from being a defence of the Arabs or Islam … my argument was that neither existed except as “communities of interpretation” which gave them existence, and that, like the Orient itself, each designation represented interests, claims, projects, ambitions and rhetorics that were not only in violent disagreement, but were in a situation of open warfare.’68 Later, when I discuss Wilkie’s 1841 portrait of Mehemet Ali (Appendix Fig. A.6), it will be evident that the picture lends itself to multiple interpretations and epitomises the nuances and potential power of visual representation. It also allows us to consider the sitter’s intention with regard to the use of the painting in constructing his image for a British audience.

 Montefiore, pp. 391–3.  Said, ‘Orientalism reconsidered’, pp. 92–93.

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The Imperative for Roberts Roberts’s engagement with the countries of the Near East, as reflected in his artwork and his writing, raises many questions and ambiguities. At the time of Roberts’s journey the European art market was diverse in its interests. Landscapes, topographical renderings, religious scenes and oriental and classical subjects were all popular. Roberts managed to include all these subjects and pictorial styles in his published lithographs, The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia.69 A brief overview of contemporary scholarship shows us that Roberts’s work has been interpreted in a range of often contradictory ways. He is said to be primarily concerned with topographical accuracy but also to change the scale and detail of scenes in order to produce theatrical and picturesque compositions. As an interesting comparison, while influenced by the success of Roberts’s images, Frith was adamant that ‘truth’, not aesthetics, should be paramount in his photographs. He wrote of Temple at Philae ‘I must give that scrap of water, and the Nile boat … and I could not falsify the height of the bank, as I see most artists have done, to suit the proportions of my picture’ (‘“Pharaoh’s Bed”, Island of Philae’, Egypt and Palestine. I).70 Roberts is sometimes criticised for adopting local dress, which he does in order to gain access to Muslim places of worship and which he also does to have his portrait painted by Robert Scott Lauder in 1840. Criticism is also made that he objectifies his human subjects as ‘Oriental types’ rather than individuals. However, he includes human figures either to give a sense of scale to the compositions, to provide an element of human interest, or to add additional visual interest to landscapes and ruins. This was an established practice in topographical painting at the time and several contemporary art critics considered Roberts to be skilful at doing so. According to the Literary Gazette in 1841, the pilgrims in the foreground of Jerusalem, from the Mount of Olives subtitled During Easter, Christian Pilgrims from all Parts of the East Assembling at Jerusalem (1839 private collection) ‘animate the canvas in a singularly effective manner, and impart to it a picturesqueness of infinite variety and beauty’. In 1846, The Art-­ Union noted in the foreground of Grand Cairo ‘one of those

 Blood in Mancoff, p. 6.  Julia Van Haaften, ‘Introduction’, in Egypt and the Holy Land in historic photographs, ed. by Jon E. Manchip White (New York: Dover Publications, 1980), p. xv. 69 70

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characteristic Oriental groups which are seen nowhere but in the works of this artist’.71 Roberts has been seen as both anti-Islamic and sympathetic to Arabs. Political, religious and commercial motivations have all been attributed to him as principal catalysts for his travels and his work. He is seen as viewing Egypt, Palestine and Syria primarily for their Biblical, rather than contemporary, significance and he is considered to both reflect and influence British imperialist attitudes in his criticism of ‘decadent’ and ‘lazy’ behaviour perceived in the people he encounters. Evidence also shows him speaking with respect of individuals whom he encounters and representing certain figures in a dignified manner. Finally, a contemporary archaeological perspective reminds us that whatever his motivation, Roberts’s work reflects actual experiences and hence is part of Palestinian history for better or worse; his artworks are artefacts which contain primary source data.72

Roberts’s Intention So what questions does all this raise? There is clearly often a difference between what Roberts wrote in his Journal and letters and what he drew, especially in his representation of Arabs, women, slaves and architectural ruins. Why is this? Is he focusing primarily on the design elements of architecture? Is he thinking about the market for such art and wondering what images people would actually want to buy, perhaps particularly when thinking ahead to future oil paintings to be developed from his onsite sketches? The compositions in Roberts’s landscapes and architectural works clearly reflect the influence of his early experience painting panoramas and designing theatre sets for Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Is this why his figures often look staged in front of monumental backdrops? Whilst this visual convention is sometimes used as evidence that Roberts treats the people of the Holy Land disrespectfully and is not interested in individuals, significantly, exactly the same compositional technique and figurative depiction can be seen in his scenes of very different geographical and cultural contexts. A clear example of this is his Edinburgh from the Calton Hill, 1858 (Appendix Fig. A.7) in which the vista is dominated by 71  Helen Guiterman and Briony Llewellyn, compilers, David Roberts (London: Phaidon Press and Barbican Art Gallery, 1986), p. 81. 72  Uzi Baram, ‘Images of the Holy Land: The David Roberts paintings as artifacts of 1830s Palestine’, Between Art & Artifact, 41(1), (2007), 106–117 (p. 108).

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the natural physical features and monumental architecture of the Scottish city. In the bottom right foreground of the painting we see small human figures seemingly engaged in leisure activities. They are grouped in a rather staged manner and could, conceivably, be interpreted as representing ‘types’ of Scottish society at the time. Perhaps Roberts did not want individualised characters, human narratives or details of human activities to detract from the viewer’s appreciation of the architecture or panoramic landscape in any of his works, regardless of the cultural, societal or geographical context. Roberts also did actually acknowledge that figure painting was not his strength. Many nineteenth-century Christian artists in the Holy Land favoured the picturesque and romantic traditions of landscape depiction for religious reasons. This convention allowed for the power and grandeur of God’s creation of the natural world to be evident. Long writes, ‘Dramatic light and shadow, turbulent skies and seas, mountains and valleys of monumental proportion, ruins evocative of antiquity were the main visual elements. Human beings appeared tiny and powerless, mere decorative markers on that natural canvas of the sacred.’73 Many nineteenth-century European depictions of Middle Eastern scenes feature sensuality, particularly with female subjects and such depictions are often cited as evidence of a general European view of the Orient as decadent, exotic, tempting and essentially ‘other’. Roberts refrains from such visual indulgence perhaps because of his strict Presbyterian upbringing. Perhaps he refrains from explicit comments in his many letters to his beloved seventeen-year-old daughter Christine because he does not want to offend her sensibilities. Many of Roberts’s written observations of the Near East are in correspondence to Christine. Noting the importance of considering audience and authorial intention, I suggest Roberts may have softened some of his comments or omitted some details to avoid distressing or offending her, or to ensure his letters were entertaining and interesting to her. It is also clear that Roberts did not want Christine to be unduly worried for his wellbeing. In his Journal Roberts tends to be more pragmatic and, sometimes, critical of places, people and events. For example, he wrote to Christine of riding a camel like an Eastern monarch surrounded by the wild Arabs, ‘children of the desert’ and he told her that travelling in the region was as safe as travelling in England. Conversely, in

 Long, p. 116.

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his Journal he wrote of the ‘wretched, naked, filthy beings’ by which he was surrounded in Cairo.74 So it is evident that Roberts was influenced by multiple factors which culminated in his decision to travel to the Holy Land when he did and to produce his body of work. His upbringing in a devout Protestant family, his early artistic training and experience as a set designer and his awareness of commercial opportunities were key factors. The topographical style he employed was the perfect visual vehicle through which to demonstrate his technical artistic skill and his strong interest in architecture and landscape. There are several significant questions to be considered in the following chapter. Is there evidence that Roberts acted out an imperialist political agenda in his engagement with the Near East, or are his critics guilty of seeing nineteenth-century attitudes and behaviours only through late twentieth- and twenty-first-century eyes? Generalisations fail to acknowledge the huge diversity of cultural behaviours and values in the nineteenth-­ century Near East. After all Mehemet Ali Pasha was pro-Western, as he believed Western approaches to governance and infrastructure would be economically and politically advantageous for his people and rule. Did those who viewed or purchased Roberts’s lithographs understand them to be overtly political? What visual or textual evidence is there to support such contentions? Did Roberts refrain from overtly critical visual depictions, for example of slavery, because he was so well treated by his pro-­ British hosts, officers of Mehemet Ali’s government, and did not want to offend them or lose their vital practical support for his travels? If so, to what extent might he have compromised his values for the sake of expediency? Finally, and crucially for my argument, to what extent did a British Protestant vision of the Holy Land influence Roberts’s perceptions and visual expression? In an attempt to address these questions, the following chapter will include a close analysis of Roberts’s writing and sketching during his 1838–39 trip, from his arrival in Alexandria on 24 September 1838 to his departure from Beirut on 13 May 1839. The body of visual work Roberts produced on his near Eastern journey formed the basis for the splendid and influential publication of lithographs, The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia and also provided visual inspiration and subject matter for a significant number of oils produced throughout his subsequent career.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, pp. 36, 40.

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CHAPTER 4

David Roberts: The Biblical Landscape

By following the narrative of David Roberts’s Holy Land journals and artworks it is possible to build a picture of his behaviour and attitudes and to demonstrate the ways in which his views were influenced by specific experiences as his travels progressed. We know from his own writing, and that of his contemporaries, that since childhood Roberts had wanted to visit the Holy Land about which he heard in kirk and from his devout mother. The Holy Land he envisioned was, of course, therefore that of the Bible stories taught to him from a Presbyterian perspective. Often for Roberts, as later for Wilkie and Hunt, the nineteenth-century reality challenged the religious vision but the experience of being where Jesus and the prophets dwelt also proved to be profoundly significant in the personal religious life of each artist. On 24 September 1838 David Roberts arrived in Alexandria to begin a journey which was to have deep professional and artistic significance for him and which arguably challenged his preconceptions, leading to a more thoughtful view of the people and places he encountered. From Alexandria, Roberts wrote to his daughter Christine of the pilgrims travelling to Mecca who were on his ship, ‘Turks of very varied costume’ whom he described as ‘picturesque’. This word is found throughout his Journal and letters, probably used in the original sense of being an ideal composition for a

© The Author(s) 2020 A. M. Burritt, Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41261-6_4

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painting.1 Roberts’s experience in theatre set design had enhanced his innate sense of aesthetic space. Drawing on William Gilpin’s late eighteenth-­century discourse on the relationship between nature and art, Roberts’s use of the term ‘picturesque’ can be understood to mean adhering to a very particular convention for the depiction of natural scenes.2 There are many examples of Roberts’s use of the word in relation to his Holy Land work, such as the following comments recorded in his Journal: ‘Further on is a picturesque village, said to occupy the site of the ancient Sarepta’ … ‘About mid-day we came to a large mountain town … with the ruins of a monastery picturesquely situated on the heights above’.3 And ‘we came upon an encampment of Arabs basking in the sun, with their donkeys browsing on the wild thyme, making altogether a very picturesque group.’4 There is a resonance with Romanticism here in the sense of McGann’s understanding of this as an ideology which ‘displaces and idealizes, it privileges imagination at the expense of history, it covers up social conditions in its quests for transcendence’.5 Nevertheless, visual analysis of Roberts’s works strongly supports the view that in his frequent use of the term picturesque to describe sites he considers worthy of painting he is adhering to the eighteenth-century aesthetic meaning referring to a pictorial composition which interprets the physical environment according to particular conventions. However, we should consider another and more contentious understanding of the term, that the picturesque is an Orientalizing mode intending to show that the people who are its subjects are clearly different from, and culturally inferior to, those for whom the artwork is produced. They are irrevocably ‘Other’.6 We should also consider, though, the possibility that the artist is an individual who might have personal or artistic reasons for his travels and choice of subject matter and who might admire and care for the 1  Debra N. Mancoff, David Roberts: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land, (San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, 1999), p. 84. 2  Sarah Schroth, ‘David Roberts in context’, in Jerusalem and the Holy Land rediscovered: The prints of David Roberts (1796–1864) ed. by Duke University Museum of Art, (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Museum of Art, 1996), 39–49 (p. 44). 3  David Roberts, The Life of David Roberts, R.A. ed. by James Ballantine, (Milton Keynes, UK: Lightning Source UK, 2013), p. 48. 4  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 42. 5  Nathan Bate, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition, (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 6. 6  Linda Nochlin, The politics of vision: essays on nineteenth-century art and society (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 51.

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people and places he paints.7 The view that artists painting in the Near East were necessarily condescending may be attributed in varying degrees to the observation that Near Eastern peoples are depicted visually as significantly different from Europeans, a position which enabled a sense of superiority and denied a common humanity.8

The Aesthetic Rendering of Place and Time In The Imaginary Orient Nochlin argues the term ‘picturesque’ is laden with cultural and political connotations. She maintains that the nineteenth-­ century idea of the picturesque embodied the idea that ‘customs, costumes, and religious rituals of the dominated’ are only seen as picturesque when they are about to be destroyed, modified or subjected to ‘cultural dilution’.9 Further, she argues, these subjects are interpreted as ‘the precious remnants of disappearing ways of life’.10 Some travellers, such as Roberts in Egypt, noted what they perceived to be the huge difference between the people of their own time and the ancient inhabitants, whom they viewed as representing an advanced civilisation. Many nineteenth-­ century European travellers viewed the people of the region as unchanged and unchanging, thus presenting a ‘time capsule’ of the ancient and biblical world. Part of the attraction of the Near East for mid nineteenth-­ century Britain was seeing it, as a living museum where scenes described in the Bible could still be witnessed.11 This perception of timelessness, however, seems to apply more specifically to the lands of the Bible than to Ottoman Egypt. The American Biblical geographer Charles Foster Kent led a ‘study pilgrimage’ to Palestine in 1892. Kent considered contemporary Palestine to be backward but he interpreted this theologically as part of the divine plan. He wrote that situation ‘“is to be seen as the latest manifestation of the Divine guidance in the history of the land chosen to teach the world”’. ‘“Because the Holy land had hardly changed since

7  Ibn Warraq, Defending the west: a critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), p. 334. 8  J. Harris Proctor, ‘David Roberts and the ideology of imperialism’, The Muslim World, 88(1), 1998, 47–66 (p. 49). 9  Nochlin, p. 50. 10  Nochlin, p. 50. 11  Kenneth Bendiner, ‘David Roberts in the Near East: Social and Religious Themes’, Art History, 6(1), March 1983, 67–81 (p. 70).

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ancient times, it could witness directly to the Bible and confound the skeptics. (sic) Divine providence made it so.”’12 In a time of rapid technological and social change in Britain, particularly in urban environments, a vision of a timeless Holy Land provided a reassuring adjunct to Protestant faith. There is evidence in contemporary literary and visual culture that a sense of timelessness was valued and intentionally sought by many British travellers to the Near East. For artists the region provided ample subjects for the production of history painting, a genre which was traditionally highly regarded in the West, far more so than topographical painting.13 In Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts MacKenzie argues that David Roberts ‘sought to moralise on past and present, ancient grandeur and modern decadence’, but that many artists saw timelessness rather than change and for them the East presented scenes of a purer past which their own contemporary European culture wanted to emulate. MacKenzie writes that the East was fascinating because, it offered ‘an atavistic reaction to modern industrialism, with its urban squalor, moral and physical unhealthiness, mass demoralisation, social discontents’.14 In Egypt Roberts certainly made several unfavourable comparisons between the glories of ancient Egypt and the modern society but this attitude was less evident in his reflections on contemporary Palestine. In the Holy Land Roberts made frequent references to places which retained significance for him as locations of biblical events. Therefore both the ancient and the modern embodied sanctity. In support of the notion of an idealised East, nineteenth-century Europeans influenced by Rousseau relished the notion of an assumed pastoral innocence free from the constraints and degradation of the industrialised West.15 For some artists, the people, dress and customs of the contemporary Near East were just as important as geography and archaeological remains in providing a connection with biblical times. There was belief that somehow these aspects of life had remained unchanged over two thousand years and hence were a window onto the villages and people 12  Burke O. Long, Imaging the Holy Land, Maps, Models and Fantasy Travels (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 96. 13  John M. MacKenzie, Orientalism: history, theory and the arts (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 58. 14  MacKenzie, p. 59. 15  MaryAnne Stevens, ‘Western art and its encounter with the Islamic world’, in The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse, ed. by MaryAnne Stevens (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1984), 15–23 (p. 19).

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of the Bible stories. In 1863 Dean Stanley wrote of this as ‘“a kind of living Pompeii”’.16 This concept aligned with a concern that Western influence would mean that soon many aspects of life in the region, which were seen to provide a direct link to the biblical past, would have been lost or their meaning no longer understood.17 Hence there was an urgency to record them visually and in text. The apparent dichotomy between the salvage impulse in the face of rapid change and the theological view that the Bible Lands represented a permanent link to the life and times of Jesus was held in tension in artworks of both Roberts and Wilkie. In the context of Roberts’s journey, it is relevant to consider the extent to which British travellers really understood the nineteenth-century Muslim world, or thought about the possible effects of their perceptions in relation to the contemporary population.18 Many travellers set out with preconceived notions based on the writings of previous journeyers. As a clear example of this point, Roberts’s letters and journal entries indicate that his initial attitude to Egypt changed as a result of his experiences there. Some Western art of Near Eastern subjects constitutes cultural imperialism but some artists and travellers were seeking something they believed their own cultures had lost.

The Significance of Dress Certainly a strong visual point of difference between and amongst people of the west and the ‘Orient’ was dress. When wanting to visit and sketch inside mosques Roberts was instructed by the British consul to wear Turkish dress in order to be allowed to do this. Roberts wrote of this requirement, ‘What would my friends in England say to see me masquerading in this uniform but after all my object can be accomplished in no other way, no Christian being allowed to enter these places at all. My object is to get at these remains of a bygone age, all now fast hastening to decay, many in total ruin.’19 Using the term ‘masquerading’, Roberts

16  Malcolm Warner,’ The question of faith: Orientalism, Christianity and Islam’, in The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse, ed. by MaryAnne Stevens (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1984), 32–39 (p. 32). 17  Warner, ‘The question of faith’, p. 32. 18  Stevens, p. 19. 19  David Roberts, From an antique land: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land, ed. by Barbara Culliford, (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), p. 81.

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acknowledged his pretence but for him the end justified the means on this occasion. Western travellers adopting Arab dress are often viewed as arrogant in their cultural appropriation or deceit. Rodenbeck considers the evidence for such criticisms, particularly bearing in mind why such dress was adopted in particular contexts. He notes that both Said and Mitchell have suggested local dress is sometimes adopted as a disguise.20 He says that for Rana Kabbani the wearing of Turkish or Arab clothes by Westerners in the Near East ‘is equated, in general, with espionage, schizophrenia or megalomania’ and that Leila Ahmed maintains that ‘since Lodovico Vartema, all Europeans who have worn Middle Eastern clothes are expressing “enmity, aggression and rivalry” and must be spies’.21 Roberts was required to wear local clothing in order to enter Egyptian mosques, but he wore Western clothes while travelling on the Nile. He wore Bedouin clothes in Sinai, but Western clothes in Palestine. When Robert Scott Lauder painted him in 1840, Roberts wore Bedouin clothes which he described as ‘clothes worn in Palestine’.22 However, for the Lauder portrait Roberts’s attire seems to be traditional Turkish dress and he is carrying a qilij, a weapon issued to Egyptian soldiers.23 This suggests the conscious choice of wearing a costume, rather than the adoption of contemporary local attire. As an interesting comparison, Frith’s London studio self-portraits, produced in 1857, show him in Eastern dress but there is no evidence that he actually wore such clothes on his travels. The specific costume he wore in the portraits still exists and is in excellent condition, leading to speculation that it was bought solely as a souvenir.24 Reinforcing the important point that there was considerable cultural and societal diversity in the areas Roberts visited, we need to remember that in a time of change and the embracing of modernity, not everyone, or all parts of society, adopt new practices at the same time, suggesting one 20  John Rodenbeck, ‘Dressing native’, in Unfolding the Orient: travellers in Egypt and the Near East, ed. by Paul Starkey and Janet Starkey (Reading: Ithaca Press, 2001), p. 65. 21  Rodenbeck, p. 66; The Italian Lodovico de Varthema made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1503, the first known Christian to complete this undertaking forbidden to non-Muslims. He was later arrested as a Christian spy in Aden. 22  Uzi Baram, ‘Images of the Holy Land: The David Roberts paintings as artifacts of 1830s Palestine’, Between Art & Artifact, 41(1), (2007), 106–117 (p. 109). 23  Rodenbeck, p. 82. 24  Douglas R.  Nickel, Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine: A Victorian photographer abroad, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 151

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possible reason for the variations in Roberts’s dress.25 When he was in Baalbec (Heliopolis) Roberts wrote ‘Being dressed in my English clothes I was a matter of great curiosity to them and from their many enquiries I should think that a Frank is a rare sight’.26 Significantly, too, in Egypt before Mehemet Ali, foreign clothing was banned and this included foreign visitors of any status.27 Sometimes Western travellers had no choice but to adopt local clothing in order to comply with legal requirements, as well as with cultural norms. However Roberts usually dressed in European clothing when travelling through Egypt, Nubia, Palestine and Syria, all areas ruled by Mehemet Ali.28 As mentioned earlier, Mehemet Ali’s and Ibrahim Pasha’s reforms involved modernisation and the embracing of some Western ideas and behaviours. While thinking of the landscape as timeless, Western travellers were actually experiencing transformation and modernisation as a result of Ibrahim Pasha’s reforms. It is doubtful though, if they were necessarily cognizant of the changes around them.29 In 1835, just three years before Roberts’s journey to Egypt and Palestine, Alexander Kinglake travelled from Beirut to Cairo and back in 1835 dressed in European clothes. He wrote, ‘Until a year or two before the time of my going there, Damascus had kept up so much of the old bigot zeal against Christians, or rather against Europeans, that no one dressed as a Frank could have dared to show himself on the streets’. Referring to the pro-Western reforms experienced by Roberts and, soon after, Wilkie, Kinglake commented, ‘the Mohammedans of the place had been so far subdued by the severity of Ibrahim Pasha that they dared not now offer the slightest insult to a European’.30 Aside from the observation on dress, Kinglake’s words are a reminder of the diversity of attitude and behaviour amongst Ottoman and Arab Muslim populations of the time and of the power exerted by Ibrahim Pasha in enforcing his reforms on a sometimes reluctant population. Roberts’s indicated reasons for adopting different modes of dress in different circumstances support Rodenbeck’s argument that it is absurd to assume that all Western travellers who wore Eastern clothing ‘did so  Baram, p. 109.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 153. 27  Rodenbeck, p. 67. 28  Rodenbeck, p. 82. 29  Baram, p. 109. 30  Rodenbeck, p. 81. 25 26

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entirely of their own volition, not only without compulsion or coercion of any kind from Ottoman, Persian or Arab authorities, but actually in defiance of such authorities, as well as of all Middle Eastern custom and usage. They must presume … that those who chose Middle Eastern clothing always did so deliberately, in order to carry out a particular programme of deception.’31 In attributing political or ideological motives for the adoption of ‘Oriental’ dress such critics do not seem to consider the possibility that a Western traveller might simply like Eastern clothing and find it attractive and comfortable.32 Aesthetics, novelty and comfort might sometimes factor in the decision of what to wear more than subterfuge and politics. Regardless of the complex arguments suggesting that the adoption of local dress by Westerners is exoticising dress-up, cultural appropriation, or politically motivated, wearing local clothing to enter mosques was simply a pragmatic decision which enabled Roberts and others, such as Wilkie, to access sites they wanted to draw. Roberts wrote that he would need to shave his British ‘whiskers’ but that he must not be concerned with such trivial inconveniences as, ‘having been the first artist who has made drawings here, I hope for a successful result’.33

Contemporary Arab Life As well as copious sketches, Roberts was prolific in recording his observations and expressing his opinions, both critical and positive. In Alexandria, he described the sight of the Muslim pilgrims praying as most impressive, but he noted that the remains of the ancient city were ‘now a mass of rubbish, which at one time contained a population of 600,000 inhabitants’. Later in the same letter to his daughter Christine, he wrote of his disgust at seeing the slave market, making a very clear comparison with the British position of his day, observing of the mostly young female slaves squatting on the ground ‘in a sun that would have killed a European. It was altogether a sickening sight, and I left it proud that I belonged to a nation that had abolished slavery.’34 The British slave trade had been abolished in 1806 and slavery in the British Empire in 1833. Abolition was strongly  Rodenbeck, p. 66.  Rodenbeck, p. 68. 33  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 38. 34  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 29. 31 32

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influenced by Evangelical Christians such as William Wilberforce and his fellow members of the Anglican Clapham Sect.35 Being a British citizen was extremely advantageous for a traveller. At the conclusion of the letter to Christine, Roberts wrote of the kindness he enjoyed from British officials, one of whom, Colonel Campbell, gave him letters of introduction to the Pasha, Mehemet Ali.36 The protection of Mehemet Ali was to be of vital assistance throughout his journey in the region. When Roberts arrived at the village of Arabat Abydas, ancient Abydos, he entered ruins in which he saw hieroglyphs and the cartouche of the pharaoh Rameses II. From the wall paintings he copied images which he considered to be more exquisite than any others he had seen. In evidence of my earlier comment regarding points of comparison and Roberts’s perception, he could not have made the contrast between ancient and modern Egypt more starkly. He wrote, ‘I could not help looking at the wretched, naked, and filthy beings by whom I was surrounded, and feeling how completely civilisation had been swept from the country it had once adorned’.37 This demeaning statement reinforces the notion, not of timelessness but of decay, seeing the people and lifestyle in the nineteenth century as bearing little resemblance to the glorious civilisations of the ancient world. This position often led to imperialist or paternalistic attitudes. Nevertheless, some observations led to interventions that were well meaning attempts to improve the lives of local people according to British values and social and infrastructure norms. A much later example of British infrastructure development in the region was the project of the Jerusalem Water Relief Society, established in 1864, which sought to improve water hygiene to reduce cholera. Before a new system could be installed an accurate topographical map was needed, so a party of Royal Engineers was nominated to undertake this survey.38 Pragmatically, the utilisation of such expertise could also be seen as attempts to justify the economic and cultural domination of people deemed to be inferior in their social development. Significantly, much topographical work was really undertaken to further Britain’s strategic interests in the region. 35  An informal group of wealthy Anglican Evangelicals most of whom worshipped in the Clapham parish. 36  Ballantine in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 29. 37  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 36. 38  Neil Asher Silberman, Digging for God and Country—Exploration, Archaeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land 1799–1917 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 80.

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The Importance of Architecture for Roberts Roberts believed it was vital to preserve a visual record of historic buildings which were physically deteriorating or in ruin. Roberts’s primary interest was in architecture, not ethnographic recording or portraiture, so it is hardly surprising that buildings and other constructed physical features dominate his artworks. Continuing his reflection on the decline of ancient Egyptian civilisation, he wrote to Christine of passing ruins of ancient settlements along the Nile which were once ‘splendid’ cities with a ‘busy population’ and ‘temples and edifices, the wonder of the world’. Now however, deserted or ‘reduced by misgovernment and the barbarism of the Moslem creed, to a state as savage as the wild animals by which they are surrounded. Often I have gazed on them till my heart has actually sickened within me.’39 In this denunciation Roberts clearly blames the government and what he understands to be Muslim attitudes to pagan ruins, for the deterioration of the material remains of ancient Egypt. Given his fascination for architecture he finds this neglect inexcusable. However, he then goes on to mention the many interesting sketches he has made and expresses his hope that he will be able to produce a folio in Cairo including pictures of the mosques which are ‘equal to any in the world’. The problem he anticipates is ‘the prejudices of the Mohammedans, who will not allow an infidel to enter their mosques, and certainly not to sketch them’.40 While musing about whether people looking at his sketches would realise how hard it was to produce them in the situations he experienced, Roberts wrote, ‘as long as they add to the general knowledge already acquired of the various styles of architecture existing in different ages I am well satisfied’.41 When he visited the Tombs of the Caliphs in Cairo he wrote, ‘like everything else here they are little better than ruins and inhabited by the poorest wretches, totally incapable of seeing or understanding the exquisite workmanship of which they are composed’. In this judgement Roberts could not have been clearer in his view of Western cultural superiority. He continued, ‘A wretched tomb was erected in the midst of the most splendid dome; evidently built of the spoil of some other mausoleum. Nothing I have ever seen equals the beauty of the mosaic work of  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 37.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 37. 41  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 78. 39 40

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the floors and walls, which are principally inlaid with mother of pearl and precious stones.’ Here Roberts sketched the mausoleum of Kait Bey, built in 1474, which was in disrepair when he saw it. Its restoration commenced in 1898.42 While he generally abstained from work on the Sabbath, Christmas Day was a day of work for Roberts. On 25 December he recorded his visit to the contemporary mausoleum of Mohammed Ali. He wrote of the ‘barbarous’ carvings which indicated the ‘degraded state of modern art’.43 This observation differs markedly from his assessment of the previously mentioned Cairo mosques, the ‘equal to any in the world’. It would seem that Roberts was not dismissive of Islamic art per se, but of contemporary Islamic art. When in Spain in 1832–33 he had shown great interest in Medieval Islamic culture and sketched many examples of Moorish architecture.

Roberts’s Contradictory Views on Islam It was commonly held in the West that Islamic rule had brought about the decline of Egyptian civilisation.44 Roberts arrived in Cairo with a typically prejudiced view, influenced in part by British writers such as Sir John Gardner Wilkinson and Edward William Lane, ethnographers who described the people of the Near East as indolent and sensuous.45 Lane’s and Wilkinson’s publications on modern Egypt, published from the 1830s and 1840s onwards, were influential guide books, also read by Hunt in preparation for his journeys to the region. Burke comments on ‘the “gaze” of the traveller, distinguishing imperial … picturesque and other kinds of eye … some travellers had read about the country before they ever set foot in it, and on arrival they saw what they had learned to expect’.46 As he had limited knowledge of the cultures and peoples of the area, it is likely Roberts approached his arrival in the region with a degree of anxiety, unsure of exactly what he would find or how he would be received.47 While Roberts might not have developed a deep understanding of  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 26.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 38. 44  Mancoff, p. 69. 45  Mancoff, p. 70. 46  Peter Burke, What is cultural history? 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), p. 65. 47  Mancoff, p. 70. 42 43

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contemporary Islamic culture, he did eventually develop a respect for the dignity he observed in the public behaviour of many people he observed.48 Roberts may have arrived in Cairo with stereotypical perceptions based on the views of others but his subsequent writings often show a more open approach and a willingness to modify his views when influenced by direct experience. In some instances his comments about the people he saw were very positive. For example, having made three drawings of the exterior of the mosque of Sultan Hassan, which he described as ‘magnificent’49 one of the Babel gate and two of the gate of Bab Zuweyleh, he wrote in his journal, ‘I am still bewildered with the extraordinary picturesque nature of the streets and buildings of this most wonderful of all cities—the only thing more wonderful is the population, but all description of these is impossible therefore I will not attempt it’.50 Further he wrote, ‘Cairo … a city that surpasses all that artists can conceive, I shall not lose an hour whilst in it to cull its beauties’.51 He also made two large drawings of a street about which he wrote, ‘These are glorious subjects, but difficult to draw in the crowded streets, although, on the whole, the people behave exceedingly well’.52 Some of Roberts’s writing definitely suggests a degree of sympathy for Arabs and a willingness to see some apparently strange behaviour as understandable, given the context. This view is suggested when, after having been stopped from completing a sketch by onlookers at Asyut, in an empathetic and insightful passage Roberts wrote in his Journal, And yet I do not know they were worse than other towns would have been under the same circumstances. Fancy an Arab in an English country town. Would the people behave better? I fear not especially if that Arab was employed in a way that they could not conceive what he was doing. The employment I was engaged on was as much to them as if the said Arab were to spread his carpet and go to prayers which is their custom 5 or 6 times a day. This would be to the bumpkins of an English village as incomprehensible a proceeding as that I was engaged in was to the people here.53

 Mancoff, p. 71.  Culliford in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 22. 50  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 78. 51  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 78. 52  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 38. 53  Proctor, pp. 49–50. 48 49

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So, appropriately attired, and adhering to the prohibition on hog hair brushes, Roberts visited several mosques, accompanied by the janissary of Abba Pasha, Governor of Cairo, who was acting on instructions from Mehemet Ali. Of the mosque of Sultan Kait Bey Roberts wrote, ‘though much dilapidated, is beautiful in form, and its internal decorations are gorgeous’. In this mosque he was shown a copy of the Qur’an which he described as ‘exquisitely illuminated’, an interesting contrast to his comment about the ‘barbarism of the Moslem creed’. Many times Roberts seems to separate aesthetic appreciation from judgements of contemporary behaviour. When the ceremony of the departure of the sacred camel carrying the cover for the tomb of the Prophet in Mecca took place, watched by a large crowd, Roberts sketched ‘many of the more picturesque groups and figures’.54 Soon after, Roberts and his party left Cairo to follow the grand camel procession. When they reached the encampment Roberts wrote of ‘the most picturesque derangement, those from Constantinople being most conspicuous’. After noon prayers the two thousand camels, two or three hundred horses and the ‘mass of human beings which stretched as far as the eye could reach’ resumed their journey with the sacred covering. In one of his many biblical analogies Roberts wrote in his Journal that this event was, for him, ‘recalling vividly the children of Israel bearing the ark through the wilderness’.55 Whilst on this journey Roberts made a comment in his Journal which again shows the apparent inconsistency of his views of the region saying, ‘Visited an old mansion that had once been magnificent but is now in ruins, like everything else in this wretched country’. In the same journal entry he wrote, ‘Cairo, like Naples, has its own lazzaroni, who swarm in every street, and the place contains, I think, more idle people than any town of its size in the world’.56 The latter comment about idleness is often quoted, but rarely in context with the comparison to Naples. There was a perception amongst some Western imperialists that Arabs were somewhat apathetic and unreliable and so needed European rule to facilitate their economic and social development and governance. To an extent Roberts’s experiences led him to agree with this perception and to become exasperated by what he saw as the laziness and undependability of some of his  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine p. 39.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 39. 56  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 39. 54 55

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employees.57 In contradiction to this observation, however, Roberts wrote in his Journal in Sinai, ‘I am every day more delighted with the manly intelligent countenance of our Bedowins (sic)—Our friend Ishmael is of the greatest service to us in translating or rather interpreting to us, the account they give us of their tribe, their laws, customs etc.’58 Ishmael was an English educated Egyptian ‘in the service of Mehemet Ali’.59

Antiquities and Photographic Images Whilst still in Egypt Roberts made an interesting observation for a Protestant of his Presbyterian tradition, recording that he went to a traditional pilgrimage site, ‘the celebrated sycamore-tree under which the blessed Virgin and the infant Saviour are said to have taken shelter’. Then, in an act repeated throughout the century by European travellers all over the Near East and the Mediterranean, he felt the need to leave his mark and to acquire a souvenir; ‘After carving my name on the bark and cutting off a twig for Christine, I made a sketch.’60 There are interesting mixed messages here about the supposed sanctity of the tree. In the context of this action it is interesting to note that Roberts was appalled by the behaviour of British and American tourists in Egypt, writing angrily of the treatment of the colossal statues of Rameses II at Abu Simbel: Is it not shocking to see these glorious specimens of art, the most ancient in the world, not only destroyed by relic hunters but carved with such names as Tomkins, Smith and Hopkins? The hand of the best preserved figure is completely destroyed, nothing being so delightful to these vermin as a finger or thumb or the great toe of a statue, and after committing such depredations they have the effrontery to smear their stupid names on the very forehead of the god.61

The photographer, Francis Frith, reacted in a similar way to Roberts when he saw the treatment of ancient monuments in the Near East. As we have noted previously, Frith was most likely influenced by the commercial and popular success of Roberts’s images when he decided to embark on  Proctor, p. 51.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 89. 59  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 82. 60  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 39. 61  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 71. 57 58

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his own journey soon after Roberts’s work was published. Roberts was working in the Holy Land just a few months before the first photographers travelled there.62 Again providing evidence of the ongoing influence of Roberts’s work, in 1854 The Liverpool Photographic Journal recorded that Francis Bedford had photographed Roberts’s images.63 Bedford, as we know, accompanied the Prince of Wales to the region in 1862 and produced extensive photographic documentation of the visit. As well as influencing the choice of subject matter, topographical artists and particularly Roberts influenced photographers in the use of vertical format as a compositional device for their Holy Land pictures.64 Frith considered photography to be the most important medium for the recording of monuments which he feared might soon be irreparably damaged or not able to be viewed in situ. Like Roberts, he was angry at the behaviour of Western tourists but he also blamed the governance of countries which allowed their antiquities to be destroyed by locals or removed to other nations. The opportunity to record these monuments and relics was a major motivating factor for Frith. He wrote in his first book Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Described (1858): I may be allowed to state, as giving additional value to good Photographs of eastern antiquities, that a change is rapidly passing over many of the most interesting: in addition to the corroding tooth of Time and the ceaseless drifting of the remorseless sand, Temples and Tombs are exposed to continued plundering—Governors of districts take the huge blocks of stone, and the villagers walk off with the available bricks, whilst travellers of all nations break up and carry off, without scruple, the most interesting of the sculptured friezes and the most beautiful of the architectural ornaments.65

Frith was specifically critical of Egyptian authorities and disparaging of ill-informed Western museum audiences. With considerable insight, and contrary to the view of many of his compatriots, he believed antiquities could be best appreciated and understood in situ. He wrote in Egypt and Palestine, II: 62  Eyal Onne, Photographic heritage of the Holy Land 1839–1914 (Manchester, UK: Institute of Advanced Studies, Manchester Polytechnic, 1980), p. 8. 63  Onne, pp. 8, 9. 64  Onne, p. 10. 65  Frith in Julia Van Haaften, ‘Introduction’, in Egypt and the Holy Land in historic photographs, ed. by Jon E. Manchip White (New York: Dover Publications, 1980), p. ix.

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What can we think of a government which has systematically authorized travellers of all nations to mutilate or carry off its proudest specimens of ancient art?—an irreparable injury, which can indicate only the most barbarous carelessness of these unique treasures. Hundreds of these beautiful sculptures now enrich the museums and private collections of all Europe but only the intelligent Egyptian traveller can fully appreciate their loss to Egypt. Methinks it were better that a few men who will be at the pains of seeking them in their legitimate places can enjoy them as they can only there be enjoyed, rather than that the hordes of careless people who throng the British Museum even should smile thoughtlessly at their incongruous quaintness and, in England, their unintelligible grandeur.66

British Imperial Influence for Travellers Over and over we see that utilising the British political and diplomatic network was a crucial component of a successful journey for a British traveller at the time. Being part of the British Empire afforded many opportunities. The Pasha Mehemet Ali instructed officials to co-operate with and assist Europeans, especially the British. One example of this is the assistance offered to Roberts by the Governor of Jerusalem, who explicitly stated this was the instruction of Mehemet Ali.67 The Pasha wanted an alliance with the West for perceived political economic and social benefits. Having the right connections could facilitate introductions to people of influence and could ease passage through politically sensitive areas. An incident which occurred when Roberts and his party were near Baalbec illustrates this point. They suffered a slight setback when their mules were seized by government officials to carry corn but Roberts knew how to rectify the situation. ‘I lost no time in waiting on the governor, whom I found seated in his divan, surrounded by one of the most picturesque groups I have ever seen.’ The firman was presented; however, Roberts realised no one could read it, as it was written in Turkish, not Arabic, a reminder of the Ottoman/Arab divide in Palestine. Fortunately the signature of the Pasha was recognised and the governor ordered the mules be returned. Roberts, of course, intended to visit Jerusalem and in the first real frustration of his travels he was told that, due to an outbreak of plague, he would be quarantined if he tried to do so. He wrote, ‘To think of visiting  Frith, p. x.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, pp. 45–6.

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Syria without seeing Jerusalem would be as bad as going to England and not seeing London, indeed it would be worse as the home of most that is important in scriptural history is laid in the capital’.68 This statement supports the interpretation that Roberts was at least partly motivated by personal religious commitment. Fortunately the quarantine did not eventuate and Roberts was able to plan his journey to Syria by way of Mount Sinai, Hebron and Jerusalem. Again using the advantages of ‘empire’, Roberts’s passage was facilitated when he received letters of introduction from Colonel Campbell to the consuls in Jerusalem and Damascus. An even more explicit suggestion of the importance of the Holy Land sites to Roberts is expressed in a letter written to Christine, ‘I set out … for Syria, the most interesting country on the face of the earth, the scene of our Saviour’s sufferings’.69 Frith used a similar phrase in the Introduction to Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Described, when he wrote, ‘“I have chosen as a beginning of my labours, the two most interesting lands of the globe—EGYPT and PALESTINE”’.70 Roberts went on to tell his daughter that in order to be able to enter mosques it had been necessary for him to change his appearance to the extent that ‘my dear old mother would never know me. … I had to transfer my whiskers to my upper lip, and don the full Arab costume, since which I have been allowed to make sketches, both in oil and watercolours, of the principal mosques, etc.’ In the same letter he wrote, ‘Imagine me mounted on my camel … surrounded by a host of the children of the desert—the wild Arabs; and you will have an idea of what an Eastern monarch I am’.71 This language and imagery is very different from that in his Journal and one cannot help wondering if Roberts wrote in this way to entertain and reassure his daughter with a more exotic fantasy version of his journey. He wrote in his Journal, ‘I have settled on proceeding to Syria by the way of Mount Sinai and Petra to Hebron and Jerusalem. It will be a long and fatiguing journey to say nothing of the expense. … Then for home with one of the richest folios that ever left the East. It is worth the hazard.’72 The nineteenth-century Western stereotype of Arabs was partly influenced by the belief that their rulers were corrupt and ruthless. Roberts  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 82.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine p. 40. 70  Julia Van Haaften, ‘Introduction’, in Egypt and the Holy Land in historic photographs, ed. by Jon E. Manchip White (New York: Dover Publications, 1980). p. viii. 71  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 40. 72  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 82. 68 69

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certainly disapproved of the harsh treatment of prisoners he witnessed and he noted that the Egyptian people objected to the conscription enforced by Mehemet Ali.73 However, writing to Christine, Roberts affirmed some of Mehemet Ali’s changes, noting that ‘thanks to Mahomet (sic) Ali, travelling now in Syria is as safe as in England’.74 As Pasha of Egypt 1805–48 and Pasha of Syria 1833–40, Mehemet Ali was praised by Western powers for his reforms of commerce and administrative structures and for his measures to improve public safety. However, in 1834, just four years before Roberts’s journey, the people of the Palestinian highlands had revolted in protest against Mehemet Ali’s reforms to taxation and his introduction of military conscription. This dissent resulted in Muslims having to leave Bethlehem and Bedouins moving across the Jordan River. Christians took leadership positions in commerce and administration and the economy re-focused around the coastal cities rather than the inland hills.75 These moves all aligned with the Pasha’s desire for economic and political alliance with Christian Britain and Europe. The Pasha’s actions certainly improved safety for travellers, partly through greater control of nomadic tribesmen but Roberts probably also wanted to reassure his daughter so that she would not worry about him. The tone of the above letter, like others to Christine, was different from that of the more pragmatic journal entries. He finished the letter with a comment showing his sensitivity and his affection for his daughter telling her, ‘I intend getting a book into which I shall put flowers from every remarkable place in the Holy Land, which I know you will prize more highly than anything else I could bring you’.76

The Commentary on Roberts’s Lithographs In preparing for his journey Roberts bought provisions, paid his servant, of whom he said he was ‘much pleased’ and met Hassan the Bedouin sheik and his followers. Roberts wrote, ‘Was introduced yesterday to the celebrated Sheik of the Bedowins (sic) and his followers—they appear a wild family, but I am much pleased with their countenances, and am very much

 Proctor, p. 51.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 40. 75  Baram, p. 109. 76  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 40. 73 74

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mistaken if they turn out otherwise than trustworthy’.77 They also provided visual interest for the artist and appealed to his sense of the picturesque. In The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea. Arabia, Egypt and Nubia, accompanying the lithograph of the drawing, Arabs of the Tribe of the Benisaid (Appendix Fig. A.8) produced 17 February 1839, the Reverend George Croly’s text stated that the principal figure is Besharah ‘an intelligent native of the Beni Said tribe, who accompanied Mr Roberts from Egypt to Mount Sinai and Akaba’. Croly asserted that the dress of all the groups Roberts met on the journey to Petra was virtually the same. ‘When the person is of rank, as in the present instance, the turban is worn. … They are all armed with a broad, crooked knife, about eighteen inches long, and a matchlock gun of the rudest construction.’78 In Roberts’s picture we see the figure of Besharah, centrally placed in the foreground. He is depicted frontally, looking directly at the viewer. There is solidity about his form, and his garments and weapons are depicted with attention to fine detail. In contrast, the ground on which he stands and the two groups behind him are more broadly sketched. In the middle ground we see four of Besharah’s companions; two are looking downwards, one to the side and the other has his back to the viewer. In the background, walking out of the picture plane, we see the suggestion of a robed figure leading a group of camels.79 Besharah is clearly the main subject of the picture and his individuality is distinctly and respectfully represented. This image seems to challenge the view that Roberts was only interested in people as ‘exotic subjects’ to enhance the scenes which were his primary focus.80 Whilst it is sometimes argued that ‘Orientalists’ only saw their subjects as a ‘generalized collectivity’, in his Journal Roberts noted the differences between the Egyptians, with whom he was generally unimpressed and Turks, Nubians, Bedouins, the Druzes and the Maronites, but he did not record a particular awareness of distinctions within these different groups.81 Roberts is sometimes criticised for his representations of  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 84.  George Croly, ‘The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia’, in Jerusalem and the Holy Land rediscovered: The prints of David Roberts (1796–1864) ed. by Duke University Museum of Arts, (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Museum of Art, 1996), p. 294. 79  Croly, p. 295. 80  Proctor, p. 49. 81  Proctor, p. 50. 77 78

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people in distant groups or as visual devices to allow depictions of exotic costumes.82 The depiction of Besharah discussed above, with its sensitive and individual features, is a powerful exception. In his article ‘David Roberts and the ideology of imperialism’, Proctor observes that, of the Holy Land pictures in which people feature, only six show Egyptians. From this evidence he concludes Roberts’s ‘treatment of those whom he disliked was not to depict their negative characteristics explicitly, but to marginalize them or deny them individuality’.83 I suggest a more considered interpretation does justice to Roberts, acknowledging that his attitude to the people he encountered was changed through his experiences in Cairo.84 Regardless, as I asserted earlier, it can be argued from visual and textual evidence that Roberts’s primary purpose was to paint places and architecture, not people, although there are some notable exceptions, such as the depiction of Besharah and the picture of his audience with Mehemet Ali.

 Proctor, p. 50.  Proctor, p. 50. 84  Mancoff, p. 71. 82 83

CHAPTER 5

David Roberts: Experience of Place

Primarily through the evidence of his writing, it is clear that Roberts frequently made a distinction between the Holy Land of faith and the physical reality of nineteenth-century Palestine. Reinforcing the importance Roberts placed on the apparent biblical sites of the Holy Land, he wrote in his Journal that he could see Suez and the Red Sea, ‘surpassing all other scenes in moral grandeur, from the mighty events which took place there’.1 This is one of many references to the Hebrew scriptures in which Roberts seemed to accept the literal veracity of the biblical account and the accurate identification of the geographical location which, according to the ideology of sacred geography, still held moral power. This ideological position differs markedly from the view of a purely metaphorical Holy Land which was the place of an inner spiritual journey. Rather than focussing on Albion or the eschatological Heavenly Jerusalem, Roberts desired to experience the physical Holy Land. This was the context of sacred events and hence evoked a reverence not engendered for him by Egypt.2 As I indicated earlier, Roberts referred to Syria as, ‘the most interesting country on the face of the earth, the scene of our Saviour’s sufferings’.3 1  Roberts in David Roberts, The Life of David Roberts, R.A. ed. by James Ballantine, (Milton Keynes, UK: Lightning Source UK, 2013), p. 41. 2  Debra N. Mancoff, David Roberts: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land, (San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, 1999), p. 84. 3  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 40.

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Charles Foster Kent later wrote of being in Egypt and Palestine, ‘“Every experience is a commentary on some of the Biblical passages and as we begin to get into this life we begin to feel those things which before were only intellectually intelligible”’.4 Nevertheless Roberts was still able to make critical observations of actual physical places, writing of the desert on the way to the Red Sea, ‘the whole line of the route marked only by the mouldering skeletons of camels, from the great traffic, now reopened betwixt Cairo and the Red Sea. Suez … is a wretched place’.5 Based on Roberts’s own writing and the topographical style of his work, questions have been raised about the extent to which his Holy Land pictures can be interpreted as primarily religiously motivated.6 Clearly, however, being stylistically and compositionally in the topographical tradition, does not preclude the use of Roberts’s images for devotional purposes, particularly given the importance of the sacred geography of Holy Land in Protestant thinking. This issue of interpretation needs to be considered based on visual and textual evidence, noting that in many cases the lithographs were bought by Protestant Christians for devotional use. Roberts did not possess deep knowledge of Islam or of Jewish or Christian theology, as he was not highly educated in a formal sense and had gained his understanding of the Bible from his religious upbringing.7 Nevertheless his writing suggests an interest in the religious practices of Muslims, Jews and Christians. For example, he wrote reflectively of the apparently peaceful co-existence of Christian and Muslim worshippers in chapel and mosque at St. Catherine’s, Mount Sinai.8 He also makes numerous references to the importance of sites such as Jerusalem, sanctified by their biblical associations. 4  Burke O. Long, Imaging the Holy Land, Maps, Models and Fantasy Travels (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 95. 5  David Roberts, From an antique land: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land, ed. by Barbara Culliford, (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), p. 84. 6  Sarah Schroth, ‘David Roberts in context’, in Jerusalem and the Holy Land rediscovered: The prints of David Roberts (1796–1864) ed. by Duke University Museum of Art, (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Museum of Art, 1996), 39–49 (p. 42). 7  W.D. Davies, ‘David Roberts and the Promised Land in Jewish and Christian tradition’, in Jerusalem and the Holy Land rediscovered: The prints of David Roberts (1796–1864) ed. by Duke University Museum of Arts, (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Museum of Art, 1996), 3–27 (p. 19). 8  Ballantine in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 41.

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In his essay, ‘David Roberts and the Promised Land in Jewish and Christian Tradition’, in Jerusalem and the Holy Land Rediscovered: The Prints of David Roberts (1796–1864), when discussing the theological differences between Jewish conceptions of ‘The Land’ and Christian perceptions of ‘Holy Land’, Davies argues that, based on his Presbyterian upbringing, Roberts’s lithographs reflect his interest in the places he believed Jesus had been, rather than the landscape just for itself.9 Davies distinguishes between the Jewish concept of ‘The Land’ of the promise and the Christian concept of a land made holy by the events which occurred in it.10 It seems that Roberts’s interest was in both the sites he believed were sanctified by the presence of Christ and the broader physical environment of nineteenth-century Palestine. His lithographs of diverse scenes throughout the country, with their topographical dimension, support this understanding. Primarily Roberts sought compositions for his art. After spending some time in Jerusalem he wrote, ‘I began to be very tired of Jerusalem, surely there cannot be any city more wretched … about a third is built upon and another is covered with ruins which are not even picturesque’.11 This is not a statement of theology; it is the comment of an artist frustrated because he cannot find the visually interesting subject matter he seeks. It is plausible that Roberts’s religious upbringing in the restrained culture of Scottish Presbyterianism explains why he is not effusive about spirituality; however, I do not believe the evidence supports Davies’s assertion that ‘one misses the sense that Roberts was walking “In His Steps”, as did countless pilgrims’. Saying, ‘Even in the most religiously evocative places he only rarely refers to the text of the Tanak or of the New Testament. … The mystique of Jerusalem, earthly and heavenly, eludes him.’12 Contentiously Davies concludes it is ‘precarious to look for theological or religious intentions and insights’ in Roberts’s work.13 Roberts’s writing certainly focuses on visual description rather than complex theological reflection but this is not necessarily evidence of a lack of religious intention. A close reading of Roberts’s writing shows that he distinguished between the Holy Land of faith and the physical reality he  W.D. Davies, p. 20.  W.D. Davies, p. 20. 11  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 134. 12  W.D. Davies, p. 21. 13  W.D. Davies, p. 22. 9

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encountered. He sees scenes as compositions for paintings but he also frequently recalls the Bible stories he learnt as a child. He writes evocatively of travelling, ‘through the wilderness … where the Israelites were condemned to wander for forty years’14 and that, ‘the mighty event said to have taken place here invests the scene with tenfold interest, for here the multitude of Israelites were miraculously preserved, while their pursuers were engulphed (sic) in the waters’.15 However, on the ascent of Sinai his observation focuses on the aesthetic power of the scene, ‘The effect of the setting sun upon the high peaks which overhung the Pass, whilst the ravine below was enveloped in shadow, was a sight of remarkable beauty’.16 Roberts’s depiction, Ascent of the Lower Range of Sinai, shows something of the grandeur and harshness of the vista. The party of men and camels making their way in a line diagonally through the foreground of the composition are dwarfed by the rocky outcrops on either side. The viewer’s eye is drawn to the focal point where the highest crags are bathed in a gentle, even light. In the accompanying text the pious Croly wrote, The whole career of the Israelites, from the passage of the Red Sea to their entrance into Palestine, was a display of miracle. Yet, such is thy Divine adherence to the great law of free agency, that even Miracle was regulated by its action. The Divine Will might, obviously, at a word have transformed the native stiff-neckedness of the Israelite into perfect obedience. … But those essential results … were left to the work of Time. The nation was retained in the Wilderness … until a new people had been formed, knowing no God but JEHOVAH; trained only by His law, guided only by His presence, and prepared to triumph only in His name. … The same resistless Power which had bound up a whole nation in this sterile and awful place of discipline, threw open its barriers … the Israelite marched forth … enlightened in his heart by its religion: a new and noble nature, prepared not only to conquer, but to govern; not only to be the lord of Palestine, but to stand forth the model to the world.17

 Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 41.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 41. 16  George Croly in Jerusalem and the Holy Land rediscovered: The prints of David Roberts (1796–1864) ed. by Duke University Museum of Arts, (Durham, NC: Duke University Museum of Art, 1996), p. 351. 17  Croly, p. 350. 14 15

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Commentator Versus Artist Some important points need to be made here. Firstly, with regard to the text, in the context of theological debate at the time it is interesting to note the clergyman Croly’s adherence to the doctrine of free will in contrast to the Calvinistic position of predestination. Also, at a time of debate about the rights of Jews in England, he acknowledges the role of the ‘chosen people’ as models of faith to the world. It is significant, however, to note that Roberts did not want Croly to be the author of the text accompanying his published lithographs. The publisher, Francis Moon, hired George Croly to write the text for The Holy Land and another clergyman, William Brockedon, to write the text for the Egyptian lithographs. Croly’s text was full of quotations from scripture and embodied a moralistic tone at odds with Roberts’s attitudes. Roberts described Croly as ‘An arrogant prelate who just writes and does as he likes with little regard to the subjects”’. Roberts did not have a high opinion of Brockedon either, writing of him to Henry Bicknell, in 1841, ‘“I question whether he has in all that is written given the original idea, let alone any original matter but what I have furnished him with”’.18 Also, Croly seems to have drawn heavily on Robinson’s 1838 writing Biblical Researches in Palestine, as sixty-seven of the three hundred and eighty-three footnotes in Croly’s text reference quotations from Robinson. In a letter dated 26 March 1840, Roberts’s friend Allan Cunningham, later biographer of Wilkie, expressed a strong interest in writing the text for the publication, saying, ‘My admiration of your drawings and of the subject has driven me to make this offer, which, till I looked over your portfolio, I did not dream of’.19 Ballantine says ‘Roberts often regretted that Cunningham’s offer was not accepted’.20 The combination of images and textual commentary exerted a powerful influence on the way in which devout vicarious travellers viewed the Holy Land. Of a later American presentation of photographs and commentary Long writes, ‘Readers became pilgrims, willing captives of the ideologically charged spaces of Christian devotion created between printed image and explanation’.21 Continuing a consideration of Roberts’s religious views, his comment while staying at St. Catherine’s, Mount Sinai, ‘never did poor pilgrim sleep  Mancoff, p. 117.  Ballantine in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 50. 20  Ballantine in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 50. 21  Long, p. 89. 18 19

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more soundly than I under the hospitable roof of the monks’22 is another indication of his general acceptance of religious difference, an outlook which was not always evident in the attitude of his fellow Protestants, to those in Catholic and Orthodox religious orders. In his text Croly also exhibited a respect for the attitude of the Greek monks, which is perhaps surprising until we realise it is their religious devotion that impresses him, rather than their specific practices or doctrine. Croly’s admiration for the monks nevertheless reveals his attitude to the other inhabitants of the land in which the Christian monastery stands. He wrote, ‘It is difficult to conceive a deeper devotion than that which prompts these Brethren to reside amidst such desolate scenes, exposed to dangers from a wild people, who hate their creed … and who have more than once inflicted fearful outrages upon their sanctuary’. And further ‘prejudiced must be that judgement of their merit, which can find in a difference of creed an excuse for withholding respect and admiration for their devotion’.23 Roberts’s drawing, Principal Court of the Convent of St. Catherine, shows the various levels of buildings at the monastery hemmed in by the surrounding hills. Groups of monks are engaged in apparently solemn discussion but the striped robes of several figures enliven the visual impact of the scene which is imbued with shadows and diffused light. Roberts observed the apparently peaceful co-existence of Christian and Muslim worshippers at the chapel and mosque at St. Catherine’s, Mount Sinai. He says the chapel ‘is said to be built on the site of the burning bush’ while the mosque was ‘erected by Mahomet, who gave the monks a written protection from his followers. The Mahometans and Christians here perform their ablutions and go through their different forms of worship in perfect harmony.’ This relationship, he suggests, ‘has, perhaps, preserved the place more than the prophet’s letter of protection’.24 This is in complete contradiction to Croly’s text quoted above, accompanying the watercolour in which he writes of ‘fearful outrages against the sanctuary’ by those who ‘hate their creed’. On Mt. Sinai Roberts and his companions saw two small chapels. ‘One covers the cave where Elijah passed the night, the other is dedicated to Elias.’ On reaching the summit they saw two more chapels, ‘one where Moses received the tables of the law, the other belongs to the Mahometans, and under it is pointed out the  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 91.  Croly, pp. 364–5. 24  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 41. 22 23

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foot-mark of the camel that carried the prophet from Sinai to Mecca’.25 It would be very interesting to know whether Roberts believed these attributions as being historically factual, as well as of spiritual significance to the respective believers.

Roberts as Commentator It is difficult to determine from much of Roberts’s writing whether he genuinely believed comments about sacred sites or just recorded what he was told, assuming his scepticism to be implicit. Roberts’s drawing at St. Catherine’s shows the adjoining buildings in a ruined state and they are the focal point of the picture. The composition recalls Roberts’s training as a set designer, as the ruins are illuminated by clear light which seems to lift them out of the surrounding rocks and the perspective elevates the tops of the buildings above the horizon line. In the accompanying text Croly commented on the Christian and Muslim legends associated with the place. He wrote how Roberts asked a monk to show him the camel’s footprint and the ‘holy brother’ ‘very reluctantly’ showed him the relevant mark in the stone. Of this Croly observed, ‘The freaks of Nature are easily seized by fancy, or modified by art, and the Mahometan is as much entitled to the exercise of imagination, as the monk’.26 Mystical traditions did not sit well with Croly’s view of faith. As in many other instances in his letters and Journal, Roberts identified sites he visited with Biblical stories and, indeed, sometimes stories from the Qur’an. Again it is difficult to know whether he accepted the veracity of literal identification of sacred places or simply records what he was told by guides and custodians in the same way he recorded other information he heard on his journey. As a comparison with Roberts’s contemporary Frith, the photographer rarely writes about issues of faith or theology in his texts but he does make an insightful comment about the historicity of traditionally identified biblical sites saying, ‘I imagine that the contemporaries of these great events would be much more likely than future generations to overlook, and even disregard, the precise localities of their occurrence, being absorbed and satisfied by the events themselves’.27 Here Frith shows a perceptive  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, pp. 41–42.  Croly, p. 348. 27  Julia Van Haaften, ‘Introduction’, in Egypt and the Holy Land in historic photographs, ed. by Jon E. Manchip White (New York: Dover Publications, 1980), p. ix. 25 26

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thoughtfulness in his assumption that the crucial element of the biblical stories was the power of the faith experience of the participants. Roberts continued his contemplation of traditional holy sites when he drew the chapel of St. Catherine, which includes the smaller chapel of the Burning Bush, where he wrote, The walls are covered with ancient paintings of scriptural subjects. … The altars behind the screen are covered with various shrines and crucifixes of the most exquisite workmanship, and inlaid with precious stones. On the altar are several costly-bound copies of the Scriptures, and on the left is the shrine of St. Catherine, with an embroidered covering. Beyond this is the chapel of the Burning Bush, the most sacred of all, on entering which we had to take off our shoes.28

There is no suggestion here that he either disapproved of the monks’ decidedly non-Protestant artefacts or challenged the sanctity of the sacred place. Next Roberts’s party ascended Mount Horeb and then descended into the valley. Roberts drew the Rock of Moses, ‘said to be that from which the water gushed forth to the thirsty multitude’. Croly wrote, ‘The reverence with which every object associated with Scripture is regarded in these regions by pilgrims and travellers, is strikingly observable here. … The Arabs also call it the Rock of Moses; and the reverence of the Bedouins for the relic is scarcely less than that of the Christians.’29 Roberts wrote that they then left ‘our friends the monks of St. Catherine’s, of whose kindness it is impossible to speak too highly’.30 They travelled to the Red Sea or Gulf of Akabah where Roberts reflected on the physical beauty of the environment. This reflection was in the context of nostalgia for Britain and a strong awareness of difference. ‘The moon was shining with a splendour only seen in Eastern countries, and the mountains seemed more grave and mysterious than through the day, so that it required a very slight stretch of the imagination to transfer them to my own dear land; but this illusion was quickly dispelled by the recumbent figures of the sleeping Arabs.’31

 Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 42.  Croly, p. 344. 30  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 42. 31  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 42. 28 29

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Roberts with Arabs and Monks On arrival at the ‘extraordinary city’ of Petra where they camped, the Journal records a discussion of tension between Roberts’s Arab guides and the different Arab groups in and around the city. This incident serves to remind us of the diversity within the Arab community and the complex relationship between different tribes. It becomes clear that Roberts’s party would need to pay for safe access through the place. Of Petra Roberts wrote, ‘I am more and more astonished and bewildered with this extraordinary city’. He observed that the architecture seems to be ‘a curious combination of the Egyptian with the Roman and Greek orders’.32 Roberts’s strong lifelong interest in architecture led him to develop an understanding of different historical and cultural styles. This knowledge coloured his perception of many Near Eastern scenes. He wrote about the magnificent view across the valley of El Ghor and Mount Hor, with the tomb of Aaron on the summit and the ancient city in the valley. Clearly overwhelmed, he remarked, ‘I have often thrown my pencil away in despair of ever being able to convey any idea of this extraordinary place’.33 Yet this is the very subject ideally suited to the skill of a theatrical set painter who was trained to create illusions of vast space and monumental architecture. In the 1858 publication Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine travellers are encouraged to view Palestine as ‘“the stage on which the wondrous events of the world’s history were enacted”’.34 As Obenzinger observes of this approach, ‘Vision frames the land as a proscenium through which “the traveller may see with his ‘mind’s eye’ each scene played over and over again”’.35 On leaving Petra, Roberts’s journal entry is a curious mixture of spiritual reflection and pragmatic reality. ‘I repeatedly turned to look back upon this doomed city, so sad a memorial of Divine judgement, in its strength it must have scorned all human means of destruction.’36 This solemn reflection is followed by the practical observation, ‘I regretted much that I was unable to ascend to Aaron’s Tomb in consequence of my shoes being completely worn out’. Continuing the journey, when  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 43.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 43. 34  Murray in Obenzinger, Hilton, American Palestine: Melville, Twain and the Holy Land Mania (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 199. 35  Obenzinger, p. 199. 36  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 108. 32 33

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approaching an Arab encampment on the way to Hebron, Roberts typically noted how friendly the Arabs seemed. The party left Jaffa for Jerusalem, travelling through the surrounding gardens and, through richly cultivated country across the plain of Sharon. As during his stay at St. Catherine’s with the Orthodox monks, Roberts appears to have enjoyed the company of the Roman Catholic religious at Rameh. Impressed by the aesthetic qualities Roberts wrote the area was, ‘carpeted with flowers—the plain is studded with small villages and groups of palm-trees, and, independent of its interesting associations, the country is the loveliest I ever beheld. The mountains of Judea bound the view, and beyond is the Holy City.’37

Roberts’s Experience of Jerusalem and Its Surrounds Roberts was in Jerusalem for Palm Sunday and he wrote dispassionately of the activity he observed around the Holy Sepulchre. ‘The court and approach to it was quite a bazaar, filled with the merchants and pilgrims buying and selling crosses, rosaries, staffs and other things connected with the place; the crowd was very great and all was bustle and confusion. The ancient structure must have been exceedingly beautiful.’38 A perspective rather different from American Protestant scholar Edward Robinson’s disparaging comment of ‘superstitious or fraudful degradation’.39 In the period 1841–56, just after Roberts’s journey, disputes developed between British and French academics over the authenticity and ownership of the site of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and other religious sites. In Britain the issue was debated between Anglo-Catholics, Evangelicals and other Protestants. Such problems of authenticity related to the broader debates about the authority of tradition as opposed to the apparent evidence of scientific archaeology.40 Roberts wrote, The spots pointed out by the zeal of the Christians are nearly all very doubtful. Some even doubt whether the Holy Sepulchre with all its enclosures covers the site of Calvary. Mount Mariah alone seems certain where Abraham  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 45.  Culliford in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 123. 39  Edward Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine and the adjacent regions: a journal of travels in the years 1838 and 1852 (London: John Murray, 1856), p. 223. 40  John Moscrop, Measuring Jerusalem: The Palestine Exploration Fund and British interests in the Holy Land, (London and New York: Leicester University Press, 2000), p. 41. 37 38

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offered up his son Isaac, here Solomon built a temple to the God of Israel; here took place the dire conflicts between the sons of Jacob and their enemies although, probably according to the prophecy, scarce one stone is left upon another.41

In this passage Roberts seems to accept the veracity of biblical prophecy. He seems more certain about the attribution of sites relating to Hebrew scripture than to the New Testament. This is probably due to the long Catholic and Orthodox tradition of designating holy Christian pilgrimage sites in Jerusalem, a practice anathema to many Protestants. While there is little evidence to suggest that Roberts had a scholarly knowledge of Judaism, he was not indifferent to the plight of Jerusalem Jews, writing of their desire to pray on the Temple Mount, ‘The unfortunate Jews cannot even pray here in peace but are pelted with stones whilst in the very act and every insult is heaped upon the unfortunate remnant that still lingers within the city of David’.42 In his description of the Church of the Nativity, Roberts revealed his great interest in architectural details and, apparently without judgement, he recorded the religious divisions and physical condition inside the traditional Christian pilgrimage site: The Church of the Nativity is in form similar to the Basilica at Rome, with a double row of Corinthian columns supporting a wall, above which rises a timber roof. The wall is covered with scriptural subjects, most elaborately executed in mosaic, but much mutilated. A temporary screen divides the nave from the transepts and choir—In the latter of which is the Greek church, which seems nearly as old as the rest of the building. The transepts are occupied as chapels by the Latins and Armenians, and immediately below them is the Chapel of the Nativity, which is small, and, though hung with lamps, seems poor after that at Mount Sinai.43

Here it is the architecture that engages Roberts, not debates on Christian doctrine or sectarian authority. While sketching the interior of the chapel, Roberts saw the arrival of the sacred fire from Jerusalem about which he wrote, ‘the Greek monks go through the same deception as at Jerusalem of receiving the holy fire which they pretend comes from  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 138.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 136. 43  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 46. 41 42

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heaven’.44 The ‘miracle’ of the sacred fire did arouse considerable scepticism outside the faithful of the Greek Orthodox community and there is no doubt that Roberts viewed the ritual as a fraud. Whilst waiting for the arrival of the new British consul Roberts made four drawings of the Holy Sepulchre. Then he and his party travelled to Nablus, the ancient Shechem, of which he wrote, ‘The situation of the town is beautiful. … The town is large and populous, and the inhabitants seem more comfortable than any I have yet seen in Palestine.’45 Roberts visited the synagogue of the ancient Samaritans, where he was shown two ‘very ancient’ manuscripts of the Pentateuch. He wrote, ‘Went to the Well of Jacob where the interview took place between our Saviour and the woman of Samaria. It is now a heap of rubbish; and the shafts of some granite columns, half buried, but in an upright position, are all that remains of the structure erected there by the Empress Helena. Not far from the entrance to the valley is a small enclosure surrounding the tombs of Joseph and his two sons.’46 Again Roberts’s statements identify contemporary places with biblical events and traditional sacred sites but he does not elaborate on his personal beliefs regarding their authenticity. It is in this journal entry that Roberts compared Sebaste, the ancient Samaria, with England, ‘The town has a noble and imposing appearance. … The remains of a Christian convent overlook a beautiful valley, which might almost pass for a scene in England, and contrasts strongly with the bleak and desolate appearance of Jerusalem.’47 In this passage Roberts again associated a beautiful physical environment with his beloved English countryside. Here, too, he made his first recorded comment about the desolate aspect of Jerusalem, an observation made by many disappointed European travellers throughout the nineteenth century who arrived with an idealised vision of the Holy City. The harsh physical reality of the nineteenth-century place challenged the sanctity of religious memory and scriptural allusion. In the next journal entry we have more of a glimpse of Roberts’s thoughts about the state of the contemporary region and another reference to the ruins of a once glorious past.

 Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 130.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 46. 46  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 46. 47  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 46. 44 45

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‘I carefully examined the hill formerly occupied by the capital of the ten tribes. … In the middle of the city (if a few wretched hovels deserve such a name) … are the ruins of a Christian church, the architecture of which must have been very perfect.’48 In another descriptive passage Roberts’s reflection focuses on the artistic potential of the scenes in Nazareth alongside their scriptural attributions: Made two coloured drawings of the interior of the chapel, one of the grotto or Chapel of the Annunciation and also two views of the town … several objects of interest pointed out to the pilgrim: the workshop of Joseph; the stone on which Christ sat with his disciples, the visiting of which earns the pious Catholic 40 years’ indulgence, the rock over which the Nazarenes threw our saviour, and the only fountain in Nazareth, where the Virgin is said to have gone for water. This fountain, with the groups of young women around it carrying their water jars was more suited for a picture than anything I have seen in the Holy Land.49

In Cana of Galilee Roberts’s account is a little more overtly sceptical than some of his other writing, declaring that in the church they were shown, ‘built into the wall the identical jar that held the water turned into wine at the marriage feast! The church itself is said to cover the spot formerly occupied by the house in which this miracle took place.’50 In writing about the Sea of Galilee Roberts again seems to give credence to the truth of biblical stories and the authenticity of the identification of place. As a Protestant, Roberts accepted the scriptural narratives and miracles of Jesus more easily than the later legends and pilgrimage sites of Catholicism and Orthodoxy. He wrote, ‘The Sea of Galilee was the scene of most of our Saviour’s miracles, his walking on the water, the draught of fishes and his teaching the multitude. Here the disciples plied their humble calling of fishermen.’51

 Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 47.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 142. 50  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 144. 51  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 147. 48 49

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The Jewish Holy Land When he reached Tiberias Roberts wrote that the inhabitants, ‘are nearly all Jews who come here to die. … They live in expectation of the reappearance of the Messiah and are supported by contributions made by their brethren in different parts of the world.’52 Roberts had some awareness of the Jewish Diaspora and the Messianic expectations of religious Jews but he did not understand the intricacies of Jewish theology and culture or the diversity of belief and practice within the Jewish community. He did, however, realise the significance for believers, both Jews and Christians, of being physically present in the Holy Land. Nevertheless, it would seem that, like most of his Christian compatriots, Roberts was unaware of the complexities of Jewish engagement with the Land. Naomi Shepherd observes that many Orientalist scholars in Roberts’s day were Jewish but she maintains that their interest was in historical and cultural material rather than religious or political concerns. She also contends that many non-religious Western Jews were not ‘favourably disposed to the Eastern European Jewish orthodoxy preserved intact in the holy cities of Palestine’. She does suggest that a small group ‘felt a paternalistic responsibility for the poverty-stricken and remote community’.53 The support of religious scholars was a tradition and obligation within Orthodox Jewish communities and some wealthy and influential Western Jews, such as Sir Moses Montefiore, certainly provided financial assistance for the development of communities in nineteenth-­ century Palestine. Noting the integration of the secular and religious in Palestine, Shepherd contends that the scholarly leaders of the Jewish community believed themselves to be an elite group whom wealthy Jews should feel obliged to support financially, as had traditionally been the case.54 When they reached Tyre, Roberts referred to both the antiquity of the place and its decline, again suggesting the fulfilment of biblical prophecy, ‘The present town is a mere village, with a mosque rising in the centre, and the prophecy that it should become a rock for fishermen to dry their nets is literally fulfilled. Enormous pillars of Egyptian granite, some of them 10 feet in diameter—remains of the town’s ancient grandeur.’ This  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 147.  Naomi Shepherd, The Zealous Intruders (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 234. 54  Shepherd, p. 237. 52 53

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was followed by a comment which seems to reveal what he really thought of the living conditions he had observed during his journey, ‘The houses are in pretty good condition, and (for Syria) the streets clean’.55 The power of the Pasha’s positive attitude to British travellers was evident when Roberts’s party was stopped by a guard near Sidon. Roberts told them he had a firman from Mehemet Ali and that if they stopped him ‘they must be answerable for the consequences, as I should in the morning inform the governor of Sidon’. This, he said, ‘had the desired effect’.56 A soldier was sent to accompany them to a place outside the town where they could pitch their tents. As they travelled to Baalbec Roberts wrote this was ‘the country of the Druses, a sect belonging neither to Christians nor Mohammedans, though occasionally conforming to the latter’.57 The group descended from the mountains ‘into the country of the Maronites, a primitive class of Christians, who have maintained their independence for 1200 years’.58 In his use of the term ‘primitive’ to describe the Maronites Roberts probably means ancient, rather than using the word in a pejorative sense. His next comment is an insight into his thoughts and feelings, as he reflected on the villages they passed through. ‘The inhabitants are well clothed and happy-looking. The children sitting round the doors reading their books reminded us of home’ and ‘In the groves around the villages the blackbird, thrush, and cuckoo are heard; and these, with clear streams of water rushing down the face of the mountains, also recall our own country’.59 Was he judging everything according to a British norm or was he perhaps, towards the end of his travels, feeling truly homesick? On reaching Baalbec Roberts drew an interesting conclusion about the temple, based on his Bible reading and his recent trip to Catholic Spain saying, ‘From the marks of fastenings, the entrance was probably closed with a curtain or veil, as in the Jewish temple, and in some of the Spanish churches of this day’.60

 Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 48.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 48. 57  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 48. 58  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 48. 59  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 48. 60  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 49. 55 56

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Perspectives of Aesthetics In one of his more effusive comments Roberts wrote about the governor and his party thinking of how Wilkie would appreciate the sight, ‘I wish my friend Wilkie had witnessed this scene. No two of the party were dressed alike, and it was impossible to say which was the most picturesque. Two Bedouin chiefs were the finest specimens of men I had ever seen.’61 Yet again Roberts focussed on the ‘picturesque’ quality of an exemplar. It is sometimes said that Roberts only sketched people on his desert journey because of the absence of architecture, his preferred subject matter.62 Visual and written evidence supports the interpretation that Roberts saw everything from the perspective of an artist and as a potential picture. Clearly in this instance, Roberts saw the Bedouin as splendid figures, of great interest in their own right. Interestingly, he continued to speak of the impressive human scene but then made a comparison which indicated his lack of enthusiasm for the broader physical context. ‘The walls hung round with rich habiliments and accoutrements, and the hosts of attendants bustling about gave a vitality to the whole strangely at variance with the dreariness and desolation around.’63 Again it is difficult to determine whether Roberts’s assessments of people and physical environments were meant in a purely visual and aesthetic sense, in the context of potential artworks, or if he was thinking more broadly of culture, politics, religion or lifestyle. One of Roberts’s last journal entries in the Holy Land yet again reflected his strong identification with the British countryside, as he observed a manifestation of Christian culture which was, at least superficially, reminiscent of that with which he is familiar. ‘On our descent we found all the country thickly studded with villages, very clean and comfortable, each with its little church and modest belfry, always so pleasant to the eyes of European travellers.’

 Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 49.  Mancoff, p. 84. 63  Roberts in Roberts ed. Ballantine, p. 49. 61 62

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Farewelling the East Roberts’s last journal entry written from the Holy Land is brief, ‘With regrets I this morning took leave of Palestine, and embarked on board the “Magaria” for Alexandria’.64 Recalling his first visit to Alexandria, Roberts ‘marvelled that it now felt more familiar than exotic’.65 Experience had modified Roberts’s attitudes and his perceptions of the East. There is no further indication of how he felt as he left the land of his Saviour and no final reflection about departing the Holy Land. This may seem strange, but as we have already considered, the circumspect and restrained Roberts tended to write in a descriptive manner, generally avoiding revelations of his emotional state. At Alexandria Roberts was presented to Mehemet Ali. There was a vital imperial political context to Roberts’s audience. He was accompanied by the British Consul and Lt. Thomas Waghorn who were ‘seeking support for the development of the Overland Route to India across Egypt’.66 Before the Suez Canal was opened in 1869 this overland route was of vital economic and strategic importance to Britain as a link to its imperial ‘jewel in the crown’, India. Roberts’s observation, quoted by Croly in the text for Interview with Mehemet Ali in his Palace in Alexandria was that his reception was ‘most cordial’ and ‘unpretending’.67 Unlike Wilkie during his visit, Roberts was not granted permission to sketch in Mehemet Ali’s presence, so he had to reconstruct the scene from memory.68 Wilkie’s painting of Mehemet Ali, discussed in the next chapter, is an individual portrait; however, Roberts’s work depicts a group scene in the palace. In it the Pasha is seated on a long divan with the artist and British officials seated to his left. The viewer’s eye is drawn to the Pasha in the centre of the composition. He is surrounded by attendants, one of whom is sitting in the foreground writing. In the background, outside the room we see the harbour with several sailing ships. Roberts has again painted a theatrical scene in which the key protagonist holds court. Roberts himself is simply seated alongside his compatriots and at a distance from Mehemet Ali. There is a degree of awkwardness about the  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 156.  Mancoff, p. 107. 66  J. Harris Proctor, ‘David Roberts and the ideology of imperialism’, The Muslim World, 88(1), 1998, 47–66 (p. 52). 67  Proctor, p. 52. 68  Mancoff, p. 107. 64 65

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depictions of the figures, reminding us that painting people is not Roberts’s forte. However, Roberts is pleased to have an audience with the Pasha, whose reforms have made his travels easier and he does not write critically of any aspects of governmental or administrative processes.69

The ‘Treasure’ of His Journal and Sketches Roberts’s Holy Land journal concludes with the comment ‘landed safely, thank God, in London, on the 21st July, having been eleven months absent’.70 Roberts’s journey was momentous and its impact profound. He returned to Britain with a corpus of visual material that was to influence Western perceptions of Egypt and the Holy Land throughout the rest of the century.71 From the experience of his professional career before the Holy Land journey Roberts understood the art market and the importance of exhibiting paintings at significant venues. After returning to Britain he exhibited his first group of Eastern oils at the Royal Academy in 1840. His subjects included The Greek Church of the Holy Nativity at Bethlehem; The Gate and Mosque of Mtuawellee, Grand Cairo; The Dromos, or Outer Court of the Great Temple of Edfou, In Upper Egypt; Statues of the Vocal Memnon in the Plain of Thebes; and Remains of the Portico of the Lesser Temple at Baalbec. In 1841 he was made a full Academician.72 In the 1841 Royal Academy show Roberts exhibited the oil painting Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives (Figure subtitled During Easter, Christian Pilgrims from all Parts of the East Assembling at Jerusalem and this work received widespread critical acclaim.73 The critic for the Literary Gazette wrote of Roberts’s ability to ‘animate the canvas in a singularly effective manner, and impart to it a picturesqueness of infinite variety and beauty’.74 However Roberts also knew that the way to reach the widest audience was to have lithographed folios of his work sold by subscription. The technique of lithography had wide appeal, as it built on the popular eighteenth-­ century technique of aquatint topography and it was a cost effective  Proctor, p. 52.  Roberts in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 156. 71  Mancoff, p. 107. 72  Blood in Mancoff, p. 6. 73  Mancoff, p. 111. 74  Mancoff, p. 112. 69 70

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method.75 Roberts was astute in marketing his work and, while exhibiting at the Royal Academy, he took the opportunity to promote the forthcoming publication, The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia. In the catalogue for the exhibition, he included the first verse of the Old Testament book of Lamentations in which the prophet Jeremiah writes of Jerusalem, ‘How doth the city sit in solitary that was full of people! How is she become a widow! She that was great among nations, and prince among the provinces, how is she become tributary! Her gates are desolate. All her beauty is departed.’ In the biblical context Jeremiah refers to Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the city and the Temple and the exile of the people to Babylon. The prophet’s lamentation, however, sits well with Roberts’s own experience of the earthly reality of the Holy City. Quoting the passage was also a judicious choice, as it evoked in potential subscribers a sense of religious drama and splendour lost. We have already considered the ideological dichotomies of timelessness and decline that are significant in understanding the motivation and attitudes of Western travellers and artists in the region. The eventual publisher, Francis Graham Moon, used the same quotation in the prospectus for the subscription folios.76 Before departing for the Near East Roberts had offered first refusal of the publication of his consequent work to Finden Brothers who had engraved illustrations for John Murray’s 1836 Landscape Illustrations of the Bible, to which Roberts had contributed sketches. When they did not respond Roberts contacted John Murray, who was interested, but thought 10,000 pounds for the series of lithographs too expensive. In 1840 a publishing contract was arranged with Moon. Roberts’s idea was to produce two volumes of lithographs on Palestine, two on Egypt and one on contemporary Cairo. Each volume on Egypt and Palestine would contain one hundred and twenty lithographs and the modern volume, sixty.77 As a clever promotional strategy, a private viewing of significant examples of Roberts’s Holy Land artworks was arranged for Queen Victoria, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London. They all subscribed and Queen Victoria allowed Roberts to dedicate the first volumes to her. Exhibitions of Roberts’s sketches were held in several cities, including London and Edinburgh, resulting in positive public and  Blood in Mancoff, p. 6.  Mancoff, p. 112. 77  Mancoff, p. 119. 75 76

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critical engagement and further subscriptions. Between them, Roberts, Moon and the lithographer Louis Haghe created a forty-part publication, with the final work consisting of two hundred and forty-seven large-­format lithographs based on Roberts’s watercolours. The highly skilled Haghe successfully captured the tones, colours, light effects and mood of Roberts’s original works.78 As previously discussed, the Reverend George Croly and the Reverend William Brockedon were commissioned to write authoritative texts to accompany the lithographs. Both writers made extensive use of Roberts’s Journal. Blood describes Croly as ‘a well-known writer and critic, and a frequent contributor to leading journals of the day’. Brockedon, she says, ‘was a painter, inventor, and travel writer and illustrator’.79 Significantly, as mentioned earlier, Roberts was unhappy with Croly’s text and expressed regret that Cunningham’s offer to write it had not been taken up. It would seem that Croly’s tone of evangelical preaching did not sit well with Roberts, who generally preferred a more descriptive and non-emotive prose. Roberts’s work focuses on accurate visual, as well as textual recording, rather than a more emotionally evocative approach. For him the power of the physical environment is sufficient testament to the notion of sacred geography.

The Influence of Roberts’s Lithographs Roberts’s Holy Land folios were highly acclaimed by critics and the public and generally praised as accurate and truthful representations of what the artist had seen.80 In spite of Roberts’s reservations about Croly’s commentary the review in the London journal Art-Union said: It is impossible to adequately describe the beauties of this work in all its departments. The execution and printing of the lithography places us, in this particular style, at the head of the list of nations that value and cultivate Art. … Coming before the world with the highest claims to consideration, as well in respect of its literacy, as of its pictorial department, this work cannot be considered as of that mere temporary interest which is begotten of novelty; but must remain a GREAT STANDARD WORK of reference in all questions concerning the subject-matter of which it is constituted. It sets  Mancoff, p. 117.  Blood in Mancoff, p. 7. 80  Mancoff, p. 118. 78 79

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before us facts of yesterday, the events described in the New Testament; and illustrates the invincible truths of the Old.81

This critic’s comment absolutely reinforces the notion that Roberts’s work was seen by many to provide evidence of the literal truthfulness of scripture. It also reflects a sense of British pride. Regardless of Roberts’s personal motivation and beliefs, the published lithographs were seen by many devout Christians as factual depictions of holy places whose stories embodied deep religious truths. They evoked a sense of the places where Jesus and the prophets walked. When the American writer Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) visited Nazareth in 1867 he wrote it, ‘has an air about it of being precisely as Jesus left it, and one finds himself saying, all the time, “The boy Jesus has stood in this doorway—has played in that street—has touched these stones with his hands—has rambled over these chalky hills”’.82 Considering this perception, we are reminded that the impetus for much exploration and archaeological excavation of the Holy Land was primarily to prove the accuracy of scriptural narratives in the face of increasing challenges from science and literary criticism throughout the period. As will be evident later in this volume with reference to the paintings of Holman Hunt, visual representations also became an aid to devotion for many Protestant believers, in spite of the ambiguous attitude to religious images in that tradition. The difference, of course, between the contemplation of representations of places read about in the Bible and the use of icons in devotion, is that the former helped the believer to imagine the places where the earthly Jesus actually lived and was believed to have performed miracles. The latter devotional objects in Catholic and Orthodox traditions often had the role of focussing believers’ prayers on the intermediary power of saints, a practice firmly rejected by evangelical Protestants. Although the influential critic John Ruskin was not always positive about Roberts’s work, he wrote of the Near Eastern pictures, ‘“the first studies ever made conscientiously by an English painter, not to exhibit his own skill, or make capital out of his subjects, but to give true portraiture of scenes of historical and religious interest. They are faithful and

 Blood in Mancoff, p. 8.  Twain in Obenzinger, p. 199.

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laborious beyond any outlines from nature I have ever seen.”’83 This is high praise from Ruskin, who ‘dismissed the work of subsequent travel artists to the East as “the clumsiest, most vulgar, and most ludicrous pieces of work that ever disgraced draughtsmanship”’.84 Roberts continued to use his Middle Eastern sketches in the production of paintings throughout his career. His oeuvre included fifty-five oils of Eastern subjects, thirty-one of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy.85 Early in 1842 Roberts began new sketches for the Palestine and Syria folios. The first folio of The Holy Land was available to subscribers in April 1842 and over the following two years twenty more separate parts were issued. By the summer of 1844 Roberts had finished one hundred and twenty-two designs which he had completed whilst also working on paintings for commissions and exhibitions. In the summer of 1846 he started more sketches for folios on Egypt and Nubia, which he finished in 1847. The first folio was available to subscribers in November 1847.86 Subscribers to all folios could choose hand coloured or uncoloured editions. Publication of the whole project was completed by 1849. The complete final production of The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia, differing only slightly from Roberts’s original conception, comprised two separate folio sized editions, each of three volumes, containing a total of two hundred and forty-seven lithographs, two maps, text by Croly and Brockedon and Lauder’s portrait of Roberts. There were over six hundred subscribers to the publication but presumably more copies than this were printed.87 The lithographs were even perused by the eponymous hero of Disraeli’s 1847 novel, Tancred or, the New Crusade, before he embarked on his own Holy Land journey. Of the object of his devotion Tancred was delighted to discover ‘her heart was at Jerusalem. The sacred city was the dream of her life.’ As they examined Roberts’s drawings together, Disraeli flamboyantly writes ‘she alike charmed and astonished him by her familiarity with every locality and each detail. She looked like a beautiful prophetess as she dilated with solemn enthusiasm on the sacred scene.’88 The monumental  Bendiner in Schroth, p. 43.  Mancoff, p. 118. 85  Mancoff, p. 111. 86  Mancoff, p. 113. 87  Guiterman in Roberts ed. Culliford, p. 6. 88  Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred or the New Crusade, (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1880), p. 97. 83 84

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publication of lithographs was critically acclaimed with the Athenaeum reviewer claiming it to be, ‘one of the most valuable publications of our day—vividly illustrating our readings in history, sacred as well as profane’. This is again an interpretation suggesting that Roberts was understood by the British public to be accurately recording historically verifiable biblical sites. This is a significant insight into the market for Roberts’s work, particularly noting that his own writing sometimes reflected a degree of ambiguity about historical and scriptural attribution regarding places he visited and sketched. The Art Union critic wrote that the publication was ‘a noble and beautiful work … foremost of the productions of the age and country’. The publication was praised for its scholarly contribution as well as artistic merit.89 More affordable editions were also available enabling additional people to purchase folios and hence the material reached a broader demographic increasingly fascinated by the idea of travel and archaeological discoveries. An abbreviated French edition was published in Brussels in 1843 when Moon became aware of pirated images being sold in Europe. Day and Sons and Haghe produced a black and white edition in 1856 and an American edition was available in 1855 and reprinted much later in 1880.90 In Notice of Mr Robert’s Journey in the East at the beginning of The Holy Land, there is a reference to the twenty-two volume Description de l’egypte (1809–22) produced by Napoleon’s party, ‘The drawings of the French Commission in Egypt had been declared very incorrect’. For Roberts, ‘To go and draw for himself scenes and objects of such intense interest could alone satisfy him’.91 The challenge of improving on the French records appealed to Roberts’s sense of draughtsmanship, observational skill and architectural detail. Croly’s comments also suggest an element of patriotic rivalry. A close analysis of the pictures and associated writing strongly endorses the interpretation that the Holy Land images provided Roberts’s Protestant contemporaries with a visual language for reflection on the sacred geography of the Christian Bible.92 In his text to The Holy Land Croly reflected, ‘Generations pass away, and the noblest monuments follow them; but the hills, the valley, and the stream exist, on which the eye of the Lord of all gazed; the soil on which  Mancoff, p. 114.  Mancoff, pp. 114–5. 91  Croly, p. 53. 92  Mancoff, p. 114. 89 90

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his sacred footsteps trod; the magnificent landscape in the midst of which he lived.’ To nineteenth-century Christian eyes Roberts’s Holy Land images were evidence of the enduring nature of the divine creation. They also simultaneously provided a glimpse of an exotic contemporary world and the world in which Abraham, Moses and Jesus walked. The Critic of the Literary Gazette, 1841 wrote of Roberts’s work, ‘“We had fed our expectations with something extraordinary from the pencil of this truly able and adventurous artist, and we have not been disappointed. Different in form, colour, and effect, from anything the English eye has been accustomed to contemplate, this version of past ages is calculated at once to excite our admiration and to fix our attention.”’93 Clearly Roberts’s engagement with the Holy Land reflected a commercial understanding of the growing British market for representation of the lands of the Bible. His interest in the picturesque landscape of the area was aesthetic but equally many places he visited and depicted in the Holy Land evoked immediate associations with the Bible stories with which he had been familiar since childhood. The orientation of Roberts’s religious beliefs placed great value on the significance of scriptural landscape. Roberts’s Britain was a complex society of sometimes contradictory values and behaviours. Bendiner writes of the ways in which he believes Roberts’s work reflected this intellectual, political, religious and social milieu. He believes Roberts’s published lithographs ‘expressed the early Victorians’ wilful objectivity, ethnic biases, social conscience, opulent taste, anti-­ Classicism, international rivalry, self-confidence, sense of history and perpetual religious questions’.94 Whilst these assertions about prevalent attitudes and values in this period in early Victorian society are undoubtedly accurate in some contexts, Roberts’s images reflected and shaped a Bible based Protestant visual culture that sought a deep connection with the Holy Land where the Saviour walked and of which it was believed Britain was a spiritual inheritor.

93  Helen Guiterman and Lllewellyn, Briony, compilers, David Roberts, (London: Phaidon Press and Barbican Art Gallery, 1986), p. 76. 94  Kenneth Bendiner, ‘David Roberts in the Near East: Social and Religious Themes’, Art History, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 1983, 67–81 (p. 78).

CHAPTER 6

David Wilkie: Bible Stories in Context

Through his technical skill and training as a set designer, Robert’s first-­ hand accounts helped Britain to visualise the land of the Bible. For Roberts the physical geography of the Holy Land is pre-eminent. The land became sacred because of what happened there; it was chosen by God as the place of covenant and revelation. When Sir David Wilkie journeyed to the Near East in 1840–41 his aims were different to those of Roberts. For Wilkie biblical story is paramount. Physical place is the context which gives apparent veracity to his depictions of the narrative. He was galvanised by a sense of history and an explicitly theological intention. In relation to the development of a distinctly Protestant visual representation of the Holy Land, it was Wilkie who overtly aligned his goals with a Reformation agenda, claiming a ‘Martin Luther’ was needed in art.1

Wilkie’s ‘Scripture Painting’ In his Journal Wilkie explained the central impetus for his Holy Land journey and for what he called his ‘Scripture painting’. He believed the attitude to art depicting biblical stories needed to be challenged and changed. No longer should the conventions of the past be relied upon to 1  Sir David Wilkie, The Life of Sir David Wilkie; with his journals, tours, and critical remarks on works of art; and a selection from his correspondence Volume III, ed. by Allan Cunningham, (London: John Murray, 1843; Kessinger Legacy Reprint), pp. 426–7.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. M. Burritt, Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41261-6_6

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convey the sacred story. Direct observation and understanding of the contemporary Holy Land would enable an informed evaluation of what had changed and what had not since the time of Jesus and the prophets. Only through this process could visual representations be true to the original context of history and sacred geography. Long before his 1840–41 journey to the Holy Land, however, David Wilkie, later Sir David, was known as a genre painter, experienced in depicting scenes of everyday life, as well as an artist who reimagined significant events in British history. Born in 1785 in Scotland, Wilkie was the third son of a Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) minister, the Reverend David Wilkie. Wilkie was elected a full Member of the Royal Academy in 1811 and enjoyed royal patronage, becoming George IV’s King’s Limner for Scotland in 1823, on the death of Henry Raeburn. He was made Painter in Ordinary in 1830. In 1836 he was knighted by William IV.2 In 1837, the year Victoria became queen, Wilkie began her portrait, ordered by the Lord Chamberlain for the British Embassy in Paris. Victoria disliked the painting intensely, believing that it made her look small and therefore lacking authority. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840 but was rejected by the majority of critics and, most significantly, by the Queen. In this, as in many things, Victoria was possibly influenced by the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.3 Wilkie’s decision to depict the Queen in this manner does not suggest astute political sense on his part. Soon after this royal rejection Wilkie left Britain for his 1840–41 travels through the Holy Land. There he brought his eye for detail and his commitment to observation to bear on the varied sights he saw. He also viewed the Bible lands from the perspective of faith. Wherever he went he wrote in his Journal and his many letters, of connections to scriptural narrative and he talked of walking in the places Jesus and his disciples walked and seeing the vistas Jesus saw. Like Roberts before him, he associated sites he visited with specific biblical stories. In a letter to his sister in 1841 Wilkie wrote, ‘came … to that spot … known as the Garden of Gethsemane … where Jesus Christ was arrested. Here I made a drawing of the whole scene.’4 2  William J.  Chiego, (organizer), Sir David Wilkie of Scotland (1785–1841) (North Carolina, USA: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1987), pp. xi–xii. 3  National Museums, Liverpool, Portrait of Queen Victoria by Sir David Wilkie, 1840

[accessed 7 April 2014] 4  Wilkie, p. 458.

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His much-quoted statement that ‘a Martin Luther in painting is as much called for as in theology, to sweep away the abuses by which our divine pursuit is encumbered’,5 suggests a strongly Protestant perspective, however his letters, journals and paintings suggest a much more nuanced attitude to religion, theology and art than this declaration might suggest. To do justice to Wilkie his comments must be considered in a broad context, both literally within his Journal and in relation to his experiences in the Holy Land. His depictions of acts of Catholic devotion and ritual, painted whilst in Italy in 1825–27, and his comments about the destruction of medieval art at the hands of British zealots of the Reformation, suggest a reflective approach and an ability to separate Protestant sectarian affiliation from automatic Protestant vilification of all things Catholic. Nevertheless, evidence indicates that Wilkie’s desire for personal observation and experience was grounded in a Protestant perspective. In a letter written to Sir Robert Peel, 18 March 18416 from Jerusalem Wilkie said: It is a fancy or belief that the art of our time, and of our British people may require it, that has induced me to undertake this journey. It is to see, to enquire, and to judge, not whether I can, but whether those who are younger and with far higher attainments and power, may not in future be required, in the advance and spread of our knowledge to refer at once to the localities of Scripture events, when the great work is to be essayed of representing Scripture History. … It is remarkable that none of the great painters to whom the world has hitherto looked for the visible appearance of Scripture Scenes and feelings have ever visited the Holy Land.7

Wilkie’s comment here supports the argument that the changing conception of religious art was inextricably linked to a vision of the Holy Land which focused on historical contexts and sacred geography. Wilkie goes on to wonder what great artists of the past ‘might not have derived a help had they dwelt and studied in the same land which Moses and the Prophets, the Evangelists and Apostles, have so powerfully and graphically described’.8 Sadly, Wilkie was not to fulfil his desire, as the conflict between Mehmet Ali, Pasha of Egypt and Turkish, British and Austrian forces unexpectedly  Wilkie, p. 427.  Wilkie, p. 414. 7  Wilkie, p. 415. 8  Wilkie, p. 415. 5 6

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kept him in Constantinople between October 1840 and January 1841 and he died on the return journey to England in June 1841, having spent only a few weeks in Jerusalem itself. He left a legacy of unfinished sketches and the tantalising likelihood that had he lived to continue his work back in Britain, he would have developed these sketches into paintings of the detail and complexity of his earlier genre and history works. The letters Wilkie wrote from Jerusalem and the journal he kept clearly reveal that this was his intention. Wilkie generally accepted the literalness of biblical stories and their associated locations in Palestine. Of the three artists whose lives and work are explored in this volume, Wilkie was probably the most strongly motivated by personal faith and a desire to show British Christians what he believed the places of the Bible were really like. In a letter written from Jerusalem in 1841 Wilkie commented on the route taken by the ‘Good Samaritan’ and ‘often frequented by our Saviour,’ then, identifying the place where Jesus wept over Jerusalem, he wrote, ‘Changed as it must be, it is yet from this point one of the most beautiful sights that can be beheld’.9 Wilkie knew the physical location, though of deep religious significance, had changed over the centuries since Jesus stood there. As an already established and successful artist, Wilkie well understood trends in the market and issues of commercial viability but he was possibly less concerned with this aspect of the reasons for his travels than Roberts or Hunt. Wilkie’s writing suggests that he was genuinely committed to developing a distinct visual rhetoric to communicate the Bible to other Christians. He was not unaware of the influence of either politics or economics but professed to be motivated by the potential power of art. In another letter, written in Jerusalem in 1841, after being delayed in Constantinople due to armed conflict in Palestine, Wilkie commented, ‘Our journey … has found its chief impediment in the thwarting measure of war, engaged in by our own country … since we seek neither political nor commercial results, our errand for a mere purpose of art may perhaps not be over appreciated’.10

9

 Wilkie, p. 413.  Wilkie, p. 428.

10

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A Man of Faith Wilkie’s contemporaries also saw him as a man motivated by Christian faith. His biographer, Cunningham, wrote, ‘When Wilkie set foot on the Holy Land, it was with the spiritual feelings of one familiar with his Bible from his youth, one on the eve of realizing the pilgrim wish of a long life … and about to people the hills, and vales, and streams of Judea, with the fine creations of his own fancy, and the rich embodiments of scriptural story, as rendered in oil or fresco by the great masters of his art from Giotto to Giorgione’. His one guidebook for the journey, the artist told his friend William Collins, was the Bible. Collins wrote of Wilkie’s, ‘enthusiasm on the immense advantage he might derive from painting upon holy land, on the very ground on which the event he was to embody had actually occurred’.11 Somewhat surprisingly, visual evidence suggests that in his historical paintings the Presbyterian Wilkie sought to emulate the emotional power of tradition Catholic religious art.12 He visited Paris in 1814 and, of the devout worshippers he saw in Rouen Cathedral, he wrote that the scene inspired, ‘veneration for the Roman Catholic religion’.13 Yet he believed that Italian Catholic art lacked veracity. Wilkie wrote to James Hall from Jerusalem in 1841 about the places the Bible said Jesus was present in the events leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection. He claimed, ‘every movement and resting-place may be traced, with scarcely a doubt of any of the leading points of that eventful period’. He went on to comment that Italian art had ‘arisen and has triumphed in her devotion to such scenes, with scarcely a reference or resemblance to these palpable localities, where these events were transacted’. Critically he asserted, ‘The revived art of Rome, like the church of Rome, seems built, less upon original authority than upon Italian material and imagination’.14 Although brought up the son of a Church of Scotland minister and being sceptical of the authority of Rome, Wilkie was apparently comfortable with Church of England doctrine and ritual as, when he moved to London in 1805, he began to attend Anglican services.15 When Wilkie’s  Cunningham in Wilkie, p. 393.  Nicholas Tromans, David Wilkie: The People’s Painter (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 197. 13  Tromans, p. 211. 14  Wilkie, p. 445. 15  Tromans, pp. 168–9. 11 12

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mother and sister Helen moved to Kensington to live with him in 1813, after his father’s death in 1812, he did not know the location of a Presbyterian church and suggested that his mother, the devout recent widow of a Church of Scotland minister, would be better ‘embracing the Anglican service’.16 In spite of Wilkie’s apparently quite flexible attitudes to Christian worship and doctrine, one Presbyterian tenet he always observed was the keeping of the Sabbath.17 In this he was in sympathy with the Jewish practice he later experienced in Jerusalem. Written and visual evidence suggests that Wilkie also had an open mind about many religious matters and he viewed the Jews as God’s ancient people to whom the first revelations were given. In his Journal on 30 January 1841, on the way to the Holy Land, Wilkie wrote of Jews who travelled on the same steamer as he, belonging to the scattered remnant of Israel … on their way to the land of their forefathers … our journey … though made with a different aim, is yet made with those who … give to this wayfaring progress the most sacred character … they return … to their ancient home, and, like their ancestors, from bondage and captivity, return to the same land of promise which … was the possession and portion of the chosen race.18

Later in the journey Wilkie observed, ‘in memory of the consecration of Solomon upon the building of the Temple, they were … bending their hopes and desires upon the holy hill of Zion’.19 As discussed earlier, the idea of Zion evoked multiple meanings for devout Protestants, as it did for devout Jews. In a letter to Thomas Philips, Esq. R.A., written in April 1841 from Jerusalem, Wilkie observed, ‘The Jewish synagogue is in their miserable quarter of the city, but it is on Mount Zion … excluded from the rock and stone walls of their own temple, they still believe that the Tables of the Law, and the Tabernacle, supposed to be buried in its ruins, will yet one day be found, and restored to them’.20 Further, in a letter to the Earl of Leven, Wilkie wrote, ‘On the side of the hill of Zion, next to the wall of the Temple, is the miserable quarter allotted to the scattered tribes. … On Fridays it is their custom … to collect where a portion of the  Tromans, p. 207, footnote 38.  Tromans, p. 207, footnote 38. 18  Wilkie, p. 374. 19  Wilkie, p. 382. 20  Wilkie, p. 441. 16 17

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wall of the Temple is left open, to weep and wail, and kiss the huge stones of the foundation, reading and chanting the cxxxviith Psalm, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat, yea, and wept, when we thought upon Zion”.’21 Wilkie’s statements do not seem to be those of a Western Christian with a preconceived prejudice against either Jews or Muslims. Nevertheless, one must be cautious of simplistic assumptions based on narrow evidence. Aware of the political situation in Jerusalem, Wilkie also wrote to the Earl of Leven, of, that race of Gentiles, now the dominant party, who for twelve centuries have occupied their land, and who have raised the mosque of Omar on the ruins of their temple. The Mohammedans seem disposed to be most faithful allies of our nation, and to be most civil to our travellers; still, the precariousness of their power makes them jealous of foreign intercourse. … The Temple they have appropriated; no one but of their own faith can enter; and the gate, once called the Beautiful Gate, the only architectural remain of the work of Solomon, they have built up, from a prediction, that through this the western enemies of their faith would, as conquers, some future day gain admittance.22

Cultural Politics Reflection such as this suggests an awareness of the political complexities surrounding interfaith issues in the Holy Land at the time of his journey. Wilkie experienced frustration in Jerusalem at being unable to access all the places he wished to experience and to sketch. He wrote to Thomas Philips of the poor Arabs who looked to him unchanged since Abraham’s time saying, ‘Their religion, though here in the ascendant, shuns the light of modern civilisation, and appears to take shelter in a system of exclusion from the observation of all strangers’.23 The issue of an apparently unchanging culture in tension with a time of significant societal change continued to be evident in Wilkie’s considerations, as it had been in Roberts’s. A reflection in Wilkie’s Journal provides insight into his perception of Jerusalem as the timeless holy city of faith, an awareness which transcends the earthly reality of the nineteenth-century city. On 27 February he wrote  Wilkie, p. 431.  Wilkie, pp. 431–2. 23  Wilkie, p. 442. 21 22

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of first seeing, ‘the splendid walled city of Jerusalem. This struck me as unlike all other cities … a city not for every day, not for the present, but for all time,—as if built for an eternal Sabbath; the buildings, the walls, the gates, so strong, and so solid, as if made to survive all other cities. … delighted beyond expression, that … we have at last reached the most interesting city in the world—Jerusalem.’24 Wilkie wrote to Sir Peter Laurie in November 1840 of the role of the prominent British philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, who had secured the release of Jews captive in Damascus. Wilkie alluded to the soteriology of the Hebrew scriptures writing of the Sultan, ‘promising protection to the scattered tribes of Syria’ and saying that Montefiore, ‘will not claim a comparison with the great son of Amram, nor can the Sultan be compared with Pharaoh, but he has the satisfaction here, as well as in Egypt, to have accomplished the relief of a persecuted remnant of Israel25 from oppression, and from the house of bondage’.26 The return of Jews to Zion was a crucial part of millennial thinking and was a catalyst for the establishment of British missions in Jerusalem.

Wilkie the Established Painter Having briefly noted some of Wilkie’s thoughts about the situation of his Jewish contemporaries with regard to the Holy Land we need to go back ten years before this journey to understand more of Wilkie’s religious deliberations. In 1831, whilst preparing to paint a seminal moment in Scottish Presbyterian history, The Preaching of Knox Before the Lords of the Congregation in the Parish Church of St Andrews, 10th June 1559 (Appendix Fig. A.9), (first exhibited 1832), Wilkie wrote to Sir William Knighton. In this letter he spoke of including carvings of ‘Saints, Apostles and Martyrs, with cheribine and cherophine’ on the pulpit from which Knox preached. He suggested that such references in his painting might be ‘no bad indication of some of the labour which his preaching destroyed’.27 Knox and his followers destroyed significant devotional art and church furnishings in Scotland, seeing those not as great artworks or symbols of faith but as  Wilkie, p. 397.  Wilkie, p. 326. 26  Wilkie, pp. 334–6. 27  Lindsay Errington, Tribute to Wilkie (Scotland: The Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland, 1985, p. 71. 24 25

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signs of ‘idolatry’ and ‘the synagogue of Satan’, as Knox called the Roman Catholic Church.28 It is highly likely that the experience of seeing Italian art influenced Wilkie’s attitude to Catholic painting and raised his awareness of the consequences of the Reformation for Britain’s Christian visual heritage.29 Wilkie travelled in Italy from 1825 to 1827 and then to Spain, Paris and back to Britain in 1828. In his research for The Preaching of Knox before the Lords of the Congregation in the Parish Church of St Andrews, 10th June 1559, and his later work John Knox Dispensing the Sacrament at Calder House (1839 sketch and 1839–40 oil), Wilkie used Thomas McCrie’s Life of John Knox (1812) as a literary source.30 McCrie was a Scottish minister and theologian whose troubled exploration of Presbyterianism influenced his ‘revisionist’ biography of John Knox. Knox’s belligerence and intolerance caused Scottish Enlightenment thinkers and historians to condemn him, while others saw him as a great Christian reformer.31 Wilkie’s representation of Knox provoked interesting reactions amongst his contemporaries. His portrayal was based on the depiction by French Protestant theologian Theodore Beza in his Icones of 1580. This is the only generally recognised portrait of Knox. A reviewer in the Examiner, 3 June 1832, wrote that Wilkie’s Knox in The Preaching of Knox Before the Lords of the Congregation in the Parish Church of St Andrews, 10th June 1559, looked Jewish, saying, ‘The form of his features … might serve for a Shylock, and, before considering the subject of the picture, would have “… sufficed/To make one think him circumcised”’.32 Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Protestantism identified with the moral proclamations and faith of the Hebrew prophets whom they saw as purer in their worship than those Christians whose faith was mediated by the power of Church dogma and tradition. Knox wanted Christian Scotland to be understood as the inheritor of God’s promise to the patriarchs and prophets of the Hebrew scriptures. This desire meant disassociation from Scotland’s Catholic past.33 It also resonates with the belief of English Protestants who

28  Arthur Herman, The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots’ Invention of the Modern World (London: Fourth Estate, 2003), p. 16. 29  Errington, Tribute to Wilkie, p. 71. 30  Chiego, p. 260. 31  Tromans, p. 168. 32  Tromans, p. 208. 33  Herman, p. 15.

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saw themselves as inheritors of God’s promise to Abraham and, through the Christian revelation, aligning Britain with the Holy Land. Later, in an 1876 essay on portraits of Knox, Thomas Carlyle, who professed no specific church allegiance but had been brought up in the Calvinist tradition, declared that the Beza portrait could not be a likeness of Knox as ‘showing a man with a prophet’s beard and a long curving nose’ it depicted someone who could be ‘much at ease in Zion’.34 Carlyle did not endorse the association. This was a clear example of the sort of physiognomic stereotypes which prevailed in the late nineteenth century and which often accompanied phrenological assessments of behaviour and character and led to anti-Semitic caricatures of Jews in England and elsewhere. Whilst rejecting a Jewish-looking Knox, Carlyle had written much earlier, in 1841 in his book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, that he saw Knox as being like Mohammed, as he saw them both as heroic prophets who ‘knocked over idols and returned humanity to a direct relationship with God’.35 This interpretation was Carlyle’s endorsement of the unmediated access to the divine afforded by Protestant and Muslim worship, in contrast to the priestly mediation of Catholicism.

Presbyterian and Catholic Teaching Wilkie’s choice of John Knox Dispensing the Sacrament at Calder House as a companion painting to The Preaching of Knox before the Lords of the Congregation, 10th June 1559 is important. The latter work conveys a dramatic moment when the fiery preacher is condemning idolatry and what he considers to be Catholic abuses. Powerful preaching of the Word became a hallmark of Protestantism. Protestants of the time criticised Catholics for placing far greater emphasis on the sacraments and traditions and rituals of the Church than on the words of the Bible. However, the former painting refers to the one sacrament which it was impossible for Protestants to disregard, although they interpreted its meaning very differently from Roman Catholic and Anglican High Church understandings. Throughout the nineteenth century different views about the meaning of the Eucharist were to fuel sectarian divisions within the Church of England and the Protestant denominations in Britain. According to the words of scripture, Jesus himself had instituted the Eucharist and scripture  Tromans, p. 173.  Tromans, p. 173.

34 35

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was the sole source of authority for Presbyterians like Knox. Wilkie’s painting John Knox Dispensing the Sacrament at Calder House shows what was claimed to be the celebration of the first Protestant sacrament in Britain and the work, compositionally modelled on Leonardo’s Last Supper (1495–98, tempera on stone, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy), focuses on the celebration of the sacrament, rather than the depiction of an historical narrative.36 Calvinist Presbyterians had unmediated access to God through the bread and wine of communion. Though Herman writes that in Knox’s time, ‘The Lord’s Supper became a community festival, with quantities, sometimes plentiful, of red wine and shortcake (John Knox presided over one Sunday communion where the congregation consumed eight and a half gallons of claret)’.37 This does seem at odds with Calvinist abstemiousness but it does recall one aspect of the Eucharist of the early Christian church, that is, a shared meal. Presbyterians had another avenue for direct access to the Divine too: now everyone who could read could approach the words of the Bible for themselves. In 1696 the Scottish Parliament passed the ‘Act for Setting Schools’ with the intention of teaching all children to read. Although there is uncertainty about the actual literacy rate across the whole of Scotland, by the end of the eighteenth century it was definitely higher than that in other countries.38 The religious imperative of being able to read the Bible for oneself was a potent impetus for this development. Much later, while in Jerusalem in 1841, the year after painting John Knox Dispensing the Sacrament at Calder House, Wilkie continued to explore ideas of the relationship between the Word, words and sacrament in his painting. Briggs suggests of Wilkie’s Christ before Pilate (1841), in which he paints the Ecce Homo Arch, that the arch is a visual representation of the words of Pilate in the biblical narrative. Wilkie’s composition focuses on the central figure of Pilate, an oddly turbaned figure reflecting the appearance of the Turks whom he painted in Constantinople, rather than the Jews he saw in Jerusalem. Perhaps this is explained when we realise that, whilst in Constantinople, he was frustrated that he could not access all the subjects he wanted to paint, so he focused on recording the costume and portraiture of his Ottoman hosts. Perhaps ironically, given  Errington, Tribute to Wilkie, p. 77.  Herman, p. 16. 38  Herman, p. 22. 36 37

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his stated objectives, many of the works Wilkie completed in the Near East were portraits and secular scenes but his letters suggest that he intended to incorporate some of this material, particularly costume studies, into subsequent paintings, most likely of biblical scenes. As well as Christ before Pilate, whilst in Jerusalem Wilkie also began oil studies of The Nativity, and The Supper at Emmaus, which he intended to develop into paintings of the Gospel scenes. Wilkie’s sudden death meant that these works, like Knox Dispensing the Sacrament, were never completed. In a further reinforcement of the importance of direct observation for Wilkie, the Arch, through which the city of Jerusalem can be seen in Christ before Pilate, is depicted as he saw it. In his depiction Wilkie did not attempt an imaginative historical reconstruction. He wrote in his Journal that the structure was part of Pilate’s palace.39 The Arch is now understood to be part of a Roman triumphal arch, probably from the time of Hadrian.40 On the basis of visual evidence it has been argued that engravings for W. and E. Finden’s 1836 edition of Landscape Illustrations of the Bible, Consisting of Views of the Most Remarkable Places Mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. From Original Sketches Taken on the Spot and the three large volumes of the Pictorial Bible published by Charles Knight in 1836–38, influenced Wilkie’s depiction of the Ecce Homo Arch.41 In the three oils begun in Jerusalem in 1841, The Nativity, Christ before Pilate and The Supper at Emmaus, Wilkie attempted to encapsulate simultaneously the theological concept of the Incarnate Word and a visual expression of the words of the biblical stories. In the painting, The Supper at Emmaus, Wilkie depicts the moment when the disciples recognise Jesus as he breaks bread, as he had done at the Last Supper, thus identifying the bread with His body and thereby instituting the Eucharist.42

Scripture, Criticism and ‘Sacred Geography’ As we saw with reference to Roberts, the issue of biblical veracity was an important one for British Protestants. Several developments led to an analysis of the Bible which considered the historical and cultural context  Wilkie, p. 398–399.  Jo Briggs, ‘A Martin Luther in Painting: Sir David Wilkie’s Unfinished Christ before Pilate,’ Visual Culture in Britain, 12(1), 2011, p. 43. 41  Briggs, p. 40. 42  Briggs, p. 51. 39 40

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of specific texts. Whilst in the 1830s and 1840s most churchgoers believed the Bible to be literally true,43 German textual scholarship was challenging a literal reading of the Bible. This new understanding also provided a challenge for traditional Christian visual imagery.44 The Tübingen school of German biblical scholars demonstrated that inconsistencies and chronologies made it difficult to see the Bible as literally true and their textual analysis showed it to be compilation of texts written at different times. A significant text of the period which challenged a literal reading of the story of Jesus was David Friedrich Strauss’s The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, published in 1835.45 The new attempts to find ‘scientific’ proof of the Bible by exploration and archaeological excavation of the Holy Land were a reaction to the uncertainty caused by textual criticism.46 The development of philology also led to a new understanding of ancient languages and texts. As well as his concern with visual accuracy, Wilkie was also concerned with the nature of contemporary theological writing, particularly writing that aimed at the general Christian reader, because the authors of these works, like the painters, rarely had first-hand experience of the places and people of the contemporary Near East. Wilkie observed that inconsistencies and inaccuracies would become increasing apparent to the reader and viewer as more and more people, both clergy and lay, made the journey to the Holy Land. This ease of travel, he noted, was largely facilitated by the recent development of steam ship journeys.47 He also suggested the establishment of ‘a sect, an order, or an extended college for the dissemination of the knowledge of the localities of Scripture to the Christian world’. Asking now that steamship travel was relatively easy, ‘Should not the commentators as well as the illustrators of Scripture be acquainted with the country whose history and aspect they profess to teach?’48 Emphasising the importance of an informed and experiential understanding of the Bible faith and appealing to patriotic feeling, Wilkie wrote to the Reverend Professor Buckland of Christchurch, Oxford: 43   Gerald Parsons, ‘Biblical Criticism in Victorian Britain: From Controversy to Acceptance?’, in Religion in Victorian Britain, Volume II: Controversies, ed. by Gerald Parsons (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 238–257 (p. 239). 44  Tromans, p. 197. 45  Tromans, p. 214. 46  Naomi Shepherd, The Zealous Intruders (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), pp. 77–8. 47  Wilkie, p. 415. 48  Wilkie, p. 272.

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whoever has been accustomed to walk through the streets, lanes, walls, rocks, hills, valleys, brooks, and fountains of Jerusalem, where the Scripture events have taken place, will be convinced he sees before him a part of the original material from whence the inspired writers have drawn their narratives … and seeing that a number of clergy and students of divinity have been making this journey … a want that to us as a nation is now in the sacred land so obviously felt. Every country but Great Britain now have their establishments in Syria … we, the poor subjects of Great Britain, whose sovereign, by the success of her Majesty’s arms, has almost made a present of Syria to the Sultan, have not a spot to call our own.49

In his Journal Wilkie made it clear that he believed in order to honestly consider the contemporary Holy Land and its relationship to the stories of the Bible, direct and informed experience was crucial. Only then could a new type of Christian painting develop as part of nineteenth-century British visual culture: The question … is, whether an interest, both with Jew and Gentile, so deep-­ rooted and so universal, may not be helped by the faculties of art being pressed into the service … it seems but reasonable that the powers of art should try, from the localities now existing, to revive indeed the impression of those events that have … been handed down to us from former ages … it is not the actual custom we now see that will help us, but that a change must be made, not only to suit our previous ideas, but to remove a sacred or historical subject to a former time … by witnessing the present appearance, to consider what will serve, and what will not serve … this journey has been undertaken, and … professors of art are thus recommended to direct their attention to the important objects of information a visit to this Holy Land may present.50

Origins of Wilkie’s ‘Scripture Painting’ To understand the development of Wilkie’s ideas with regard to Scripture painting it is helpful to again consider the thinking behind some of his earlier works. Before his visit to Europe Wilkie produced such paintings as Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch (1822), painted for the Duke of Wellington51 and also the previously mentioned The Preaching of  Wilkie, pp. 437–8.  Wilkie, pp. 375–6. 51  Chiego, p. 11. 49 50

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Knox before the Lords of the Congregation, 10th June 1559. The former painting commemorates the announcement of Wellington’s 1815 victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Its subject reflects a developing approach to history and textual and visual historiography in the early nineteenth century which began to validate the experience of ordinary people in the context of great events, ‘history from below’.52 Painting the Chelsea Pensioners, somewhat idealised as it is, nevertheless seems to be quite consistent with Wilkie’s choice of ordinary people as subjects, such as in The Penny Wedding (1818), and The Errand Boy (1818), earlier genre paintings. However, while the image of the ordinary Englishman might be idealised in the Chelsea Pensioners, Tromans comments on Wilkie’s depiction of a Jewish man in the painting, saying it is an ‘anti-Semitic image of a Jew out of place, the pushy shopkeeper ignoring the celebrations’. This depiction is contrasted with Wilkie’s 1841 oil sketches and drawings showing Jewish ritual at Jerusalem which are ‘flattering and even glamorous’.53 Even when Wilkie moved from genre paintings, in which he depicted moments in the lives of ordinary British people, to more monumental subjects, he continued to produce works which show events through the eyes of everyday people. The subject matter reminds us, however, that they are people whose lives are affected by the decisions and deeds of the great and powerful. There was, at the time, a developing interest in knowing ‘what it had felt like to be alive in the past’.54 We might call this an awareness of the ‘period eye’.55 Here the opinion of Sir Joshua Reynolds is pertinent. Reynolds disapproved of the term ‘history painting’, believing that art was more than literal recording of places and events.56 Tromans notes that Wilkie’s French artistic contemporaries, Gericault and Delacroix, recognised that Wilkie was ‘a pioneer in visualising history as experience rather than as action. This sense of the past was socially and nationally oriented and engaged with the contemporary viewer.’57 Such an attitude to history is also compatible with Wilkie’s biblical works and sketches in the Holy Land in which  Tromans, p. 156.  Tromans, p. 200. 54  Tromans, p. 157. 55  Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 40. 56  Tromans, p. 159. 57  Tromans, p. 161. 52 53

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he sought to encapsulate for the contemporary British Protestant, the experience of being in the places where Jesus and his disciples lived and followed their mission. Issues of Establishment and church and state authority continued to be matters of tension, conflict and heated debate throughout the British nineteenth century. When it came to painting key moments in Protestant history, Wilkie’s focus did turn, as in traditional history painting, to the deeds of the powerful but to actions that had enormous repercussions for ordinary believers. The Preaching of Knox before the Lords of the Congregation, 10th June 1559 (Appendix Fig. A.9), recalls a seminal event in British Protestantism which culminated in the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. The companion piece, Knox Dispensing the Sacrament at Calder House, for which Wilkie made detailed preliminary sketches, recorded the first Protestant communion. Hence, together, the two works highlight the dual concerns of church and state which were still tensions in Wilkie’s time. In the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s, issues of religious authority and the Church were much debated. Evangelicals and Tractarians shared many beliefs, particularly about the divine inspiration of scripture, miracles, the truth of prophecy and God’s judgement of humanity. The issues which divided the Church in these decades focused on the relationship of scripture and tradition, the authority of clergy and the nature of the sacraments and these were matters about which Evangelical and Tractarian thinking definitely diverged.58 Wilkie sought to depict scriptural scenes based on what he believed to be historical and physical authenticity, rather than relying on tradition and imagination, the sources he believed inspired the art of Roman Catholicism. Likewise he made a strong statement about the nature of the sacraments and priestly authority in his choice of the subject of Knox Dispensing the Sacrament at Calder House. Wilkie endorsed the power of the visual as an aid to contemplating the Bible and one’s personal faith. Contemplating the lack of devotional art in Protestantism he wrote, in 1839, with reference to the Oxford Movement, ‘“Zeal is indispensable to uphold the Establishment, this zeal must be either High Church or Low Church, that is towards Catholic or evangelical doctrine. If to Catholic, they must call in Art, an auxiliary that 58  Gerald Parsons, ‘Reform, Revival and Realignment: The Experience of Victorian Anglicanism’, in Parsons, Gerald, ed., Religion in Victorian Britain. Volume I: Traditions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 14–66 (p. 34).

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Protestants have neglected, though even now Pictures might help the devotion of the former (probably a mistake for the latter) class of people.”’59 Between his two Knox paintings Wilkie spent several years travelling in Europe. This experience influenced Wilkie’s developing visual style and choice of subject matter, as well as developing his sense of the cultural richness of European religious art. Market demands and artistic competition were factors influencing British artists, including Wilkie, to travel.60 Such travels enabled artists to view potential new subject matter and to develop innovative approaches to the representation of both familiar and exotic scenes. Wilkie was particularly concerned to record distinctive aspects of the cultures he visited. By the time he went to Spain in 1827, his focus had shifted from genre paintings and Protestant history paintings to political and military subjects, focusing on Britain’s and Spain’s association in the Peninsular War of 1808–14. As an artist establishing his career, this shift in subject matter was, for Wilkie, partly commercially motivated, influenced by British market demand. When in Rome in 1827, Wilkie was intrigued by the visual spectacle, power and history of the Catholic rituals of Holy Week he witnessed.61 Over a decade before the Holy Land journey he displayed fascination for religious subjects and a complex attitude to diverse expressions of piety. At this time Wilkie was grappling with aesthetic decisions, as well as pondering issues of the role of religious art, considerations which were to lead to the ideological position expressed in his subsequent Scripture painting. This inner process seems to have been informed by Wilkie’s contemplation of the relationship between the aesthetic of contemporary Catholic practices he was witnessing in Rome and great Catholic art of the past.62 At the same time as Wilkie, the British Protestant painter Thomas Unwins was in Rome and he was appalled by the pomp and ceremony and the displays of public penance.63 Wilkie’s approach was much more nuanced and thoughtful and less immediately judgemental than that of his countryman.64 This attitude is also indicative of the thoughtful and rational outlook Wilkie brings to bear on the many challenging experiences he later meets in the Holy Land.  Errington, Tribute to Wilkie, p. 77.  Errington, Tribute to Wilkie, p. 79. 61  Errington, Tribute to Wilkie, p. 81. 62  Errington, Tribute to Wilkie, p. 82. 63  Errington, Tribute to Wilkie, p. 81. 64  Errington, Tribute to Wilkie, pp. 81–2. 59 60

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As well as the compositional influence of Renaissance works evident in Wilkie’s draughtsmanship there is also a scale in the works which lends a gravitas to the sacred scenes. Wilkie sees these great works as reflecting a cultural richness which is not evident to him in his native Presbyterian Scotland. In Rome Wilkie began his depiction of an act of piety altogether different from The Preaching of Knox. He began his Cardinals, Priests and Roman Citizens Washing the Pilgrims Feet, which he finished in London 1828–29. Again Italian Renaissance influence is evident in Wilkie’s work, as the formal composition of the painting reflects that of Raphael’s frescoes, works seen by Wilkie on his travels.65 Wilkie saw Catholicism as having developed a rich iconography and having inspired artists who had the technical capacity to produce large-­ scale works of grandeur and spiritual power and this led to his fascination with Catholicism and its visual culture. Wilkie was conflicted in his attitude, as he held strong Protestant beliefs but he knew, with discomfort, that the Reformation had been responsible for the destruction of many art works, such as those which inspired him. He believed that Protestantism lacked a coherent visual vocabulary with which to express its theological, doctrinal and ecclesiological views. So it was to develop this iconography and style that Wilkie travelled to the Holy Land in 1841 at a time when British visual culture was engaged in trying to reconcile the place of the image in Protestant devotion. During the 1830s about forty travel books a year were written about the Holy Land.66 The 1830s also saw a proliferation of biblical prints and illustrated Bibles produced for the general British public and this audience, as well as Wilkie, was aware of his friend David Roberts’s detailed depictions of Holy Land sites. Just before Wilkie departed for the Near East, Jewish Academician Solomon Hart arranged a viewing of Roberts’s drawings for him and several Oriental travellers and scholars.67 Wilkie understood that his intention to produce work with explicit theological meaning differed from that of Roberts but he viewed Roberts’s work as having the potential for significant influence. It is certainly evident that Wilkie saw Roberts’s work as primarily providing what were believed  Chiego, p. 208.  Simon Coleman, ‘From the Sublime to the Meticulous: Art, Anthropology and Victorian Pilgrimage to Palestine’, History and Anthropology, Vol. 13, No. 4, November 2002, 275–290 (p. 275). 67  Tromans, p. 214. 65 66

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to be accurate topographical records of the contemporary region but he believed that viewing such work might inspire people to make the journey to the Holy Land themselves. Wilkie wrote from Jerusalem, ‘another style of art will naturally grow out of the opening of Syria. You know our brother member Roberts is both painting most interesting pictures, and publishing his drawings, to show what Syria is at the present time. This, though distinct from Scripture art, may yet, with his great ability, lead to the call for Scripture pictures, and may lead to others visiting the Holy territory.’68 Although Roberts’s The Holy Land, David Roberts’ Views in Palestine, and in Egypt, Arabia and Syria; With Historical and Descriptive Notices by the Rev. George Croly was not published until 1842, after Wilkie’s death, Wilkie would have been aware of the planned publication, as advertisements had appeared in the Athenaeum and the Literary Gazette as early as May 1840. Readers were told, ‘“natural, powerful and solemn, must be the feeling excited by the scenes among which lay the greatest events of human nature … the plains trodden by the Patriarchs—the very cities in which the Prophets and Apostles preached—the very mountains and waters hallowed by the presence of the great Sovereign and Inspirer of them all!”’69

Politics and Visual Rhetoric At the time of Wilkie’s journey, the new British consulate in Jerusalem was attempting to establish a Protestant community. Roman Catholic and Orthodox communities were long established in the region, thus enabling political affiliations in Syria for European powers such as France and Russia. For the British in the Holy Land attempted conversion of the Jewish population involved both theological and political goals. Briggs contends that Wilkie’s art from his time in the Holy Land was the ‘visual corollary’ of the British imperial policy.70 An analysis of the last painting Wilkie produced before his death challenges the notion that this was necessarily the case.

 Wilkie, p. 443.  Briggs, p. 38 70  Briggs, p. 38. 68 69

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In Alexandria Wilkie was commissioned by the Egyptian Pasha, Mehemet Ali, to paint his portrait (Appendix Fig. A.6).71 The Pasha was aware that in Constantinople Wilkie had recently painted the new Ottoman Sultan, Abd-ul-Mejid, with whom Mehemet Ali was in conflict. Mehemet Ali had recently been defeated by the Ottomans, aided by the British navy. In her analysis of the portrait of the Pasha, the painting of which Wilkie willingly undertook, Weeks argues that, rather than being manipulation of an Eastern sitter, the Pasha was actually in control of his own image and of the messages he wanted it to convey to both Britain and Egypt.72 The commission was to allow Wilkie to finish the painting in Britain, make a copy and send the original to Mehemet Ali. Wilkie’s death prevented the completion of the process but ironically the painting hung next to that of the Sultan at the 1842 Royal Academy exhibition. Mehemet Ali instructed Wilkie about the composition of the picture and the way he was to be portrayed. His bearded and powerful figure dominates the picture space and his strong gaze is directed unwaveringly at the viewer. The impression conveyed is of far greater dignity and authority than that seen in the smaller and younger figure of the Sultan who looks almost overwhelmed by the large couch on which he sits in Wilkie’s composition. Mehemet Ali’s choice of dress, the position of his hand in relation to his sword, his frontal pose on a throne-like chair and the lack of decorative ‘Oriental’ background are all deliberate expressions of the political message he wanted to convey to both Egyptian and Western audiences. The Pasha controlled the visual image by which the West would see him. Weeks writes, ‘Mehemet Ali intended to enter his Western world as the powerful ruler of an independent country, rather than as a bruised or backward, “good colonial” subject’.73 The number of British military and diplomatic personnel in the Near East was increasing in the early 1840s and this made it easier for British artists such as Wilkie to work there, as the network enabled introductions to key people and facilitated travel arrangements. Briggs argues that Wilkie’s planned painting, The Tartar Messenger Narrating the News of the Victory of St Jean d’Acre (1840), ‘engages directly with British Imperial 71  The title of the painting uses the spelling Muhemed Ali, Pacha rather than Mehemet Ali, Pasha. The latter is more commonly found in literature. 72  Emily M.  Weeks, ‘About face: Sir David Wilkie’s portrait of Mehmet Ali, Pasha of Egypt’, in Orientalism Transposed: The Impact of the Colonies on British Culture, ed. by Julie F. Codell and Dianne Sachko Macleod (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 1998), p. 54. 73  Weeks, p. 54.

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policy, specifically the new military alliance with the Turks’.74 The painting certainly was the result of Wilkie’s direct experience of the political and military situation. It also aligned with his earlier history paintings. He reached Constantinople in October 1840 and had to stay until January 1841 because of the conflict in Palestine between Ottoman forces and Mehemet Ali. The Pasha’s troops were driven back with help from the British navy which bombarded the port of Acre and this gave Wilkie the idea of producing Tartar Messenger Narrating the News of the Victory of St Jean d’ Acre by drawing on the theme of Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch.75 Tromans describes the resulting depiction thus, ‘The different races of the fragile Ottoman Empire are gathered in a café, receiving news of a victory achieved over a rebel province with the help of the ever-expanding British Empire’.76 In a letter from Constantinople in November 1840 to his brother Thomas, Wilkie wrote, ‘our desires have been gratified in a remarkable manner by the glorious account of the siege and conquest of St. Jean d’Acre. This spread over Constantinople like wild-fire, gladdening everyone, Turk, Jew, and Christian, and even, it is said, exciting the young Sultan to a kind of frenzy of joy.’77 Wilkie goes on to write of the celebratory feast during which they toasted the Emperor of Austria, Queen Victoria and the Sultan. After retiring Wilkie said he could hear from the other British revellers ‘resounding cadences of the song “The good old English Gentleman”’.78 Wilkie may have claimed to ‘seek neither political nor commercial results’79 but this does not mean he lacked patriotic or imperial fervour. In another letter, this time written to the Earl of Leven from Jerusalem in 1841, Wilkie recalled his feelings when he heard of war whilst still in Constantinople awaiting the commencement of his journey: Syria must be conquered, and Jerusalem (again) delivered, before a step could be taken upon this distant pilgrimage. Still, by the brilliant achievements of her Majesty’s arms, and the decided conduct of her Majesty’s councils, a war, that might have lasted for years, was in a few weeks brought to a close; and I … could visit Syria even with additional interest, and could  Briggs, pp. 33–4.  Tromans, p. 197. 76  Tromans, p. 197. 77  Wilkie, p. 338. 78  Wilkie, p. 338. 79  Wilkie, p. 428. 74 75

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see almost as a conquest of Great Britain, almost as gift of our sovereign to her imperial ally, that favoured land, once the glory of Solomon, which, after all she has gone through and suffered in her mysterious history, seems still destined for some great accomplishment of the divine will.80

The destiny of the Holy Land of his faith, the Britain of the New Jerusalem and the Britain of Empire are inextricably linked in Wilkie’s perceptions, more so than is explicitly suggested by Roberts in his writing and artworks.

The Patriotic Traveller It would seem that Britain was never far from Wilkie’s thoughts. Always the keen observer of place, as Roberts had before him, Wilkie compared Holy Land sites to sites in Britain, writing to Collins about Jerusalem, ‘Her white stone walls, and high square towers, recalled a little Windsor Castle’.81 While such statements are often interpreted as providing evidence of a British imperialistic and proprietorial attitude to the Holy Land, it is worth noting that when in Larneca (sic) on Cyprus, Wilkie compared the houses he saw to ‘steep lanes in the old town of Edinburgh’.82 It is possible that Wilkie’s comments reflected nostalgia and an interest in architecture and the aesthetics of urban environments. In considering the attempts of the German ‘Nazarenes’, to capture the essence of religious art, Wilkie wrote that he was interested in the ‘great and meritorious efforts’ of artists in Munich in their attempts to revise the art of ‘Byzantine or early Italian’.83 However, Wilkie again emphasises his belief in the importance of a distinctly British approach to scripture painting, saying of the German artists’ work, ‘I have doubts … if such a style would either suit the disposition of the English painters, or awaken the attention of the English public, to whom it would be like bringing forward the Talmud and the Fathers of the Church, instead of the Pentateuch and the New Testament’. This statement suggests some knowledge of Judaeo-Christian history but, more importantly, emphasises his understanding of the debates within British Christianity at the time. Wilkie’s  Wilkie, p. 430.  Wilkie, p. 425. 82  Wilkie, p. 387. 83  Wilkie, p. 416. 80 81

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statement in his letter to Sir Robert Peel in March 1841 makes it clear that he advocates the Protestant view of the primacy of scripture over tradition and learned commentary.84 Reinforcing the point that this conviction underpins his journey, in the same letter to Peel Wilkie he writes, I think I may venture to ask you … whether the recent events … may not open a new field for the genius of British artists to work upon—a field no other nation has thought of, and which, up to this time, is untouched, but such a field as, if properly cultivated, would, from the well-known religious disposition of all ranks, sects, and conditions of her Majesty’s subjects, produce this most salutary result—the illustration and study of the Holy Scriptures?85

In a further alignment of religion, art and imperial politics, in a letter written in December 1840 to Sir Martin Archer Shee, P.R.A.  Wilkie comments, war in Syria, so glorious for the arms of her Majesty … gives even new calls for a visit to that remarkable and sacred land. During our sojourn in this renowned capital of the empire, you may believe how much to the observer of life, and to the artist, the review of an Asiatic and Mussulman people naturally present as an object of research. We have this advantage, that we see the Grand Turk now, as he always has been disposed to be, our national ally.86

In an important insight into the significance of audience, by January 1841 Wilkie’s letter to his sister reveals a much more critical opinion of the Ottomans than that made when writing to influential British gentlemen of his acquaintance, In regard to our voyage to Syria, the great causes of delay have been, first, the war, and then the backwardness of the eastern authorities to bring it to a close. To the Turks the successes in Syria have been most unexpected; at the same time so elated have they been by them, as to fancy that Mehemet Ali could and ought to be crushed altogether … and it is only the news of the more moderated feeling in England that has made them more reasonable.87  Wilkie, p. 414.  Wilkie, p. 419. 86  Wilkie, p. 353. 87  Wilkie, p. 369. 84 85

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In a similar tone, the letter to his brother Thomas speaks of the disharmony sensed when visiting the ‘Mosque of St Sophia’ in which Wilkie saw, ‘wild Egyptians … who looked like Bedouins, Ethiopians, or dwellers in Mesopotamia, and seemed to regard us, with our privilege of the firman, as intruders in the sanctuary of the faithful’.88

Imperialist Intentions? Aligned with her interpretation of Wilkie’s art as a ‘visual corollary’ of British imperial policy, Briggs argues that ‘Wilkie’s most crucial … contribution to British imperial ideology was the introduction of an empirical and topographical dimension to biblical painting, and, by extension, a new colonizing impetus to Protestant belief and art’.89 In this contention Briggs assumes Wilkie’s art would inspire political, rather than theological, claims on the Holy Land. Alongside British political and strategic intentions, however, there was also a genuine belief that British Christians were inheritors of the Holy Land from which their faith came. For them the land was sanctified by the life of Jesus and the physical environment was a sign of His presence. Of course the empirical and topographical characterised Roberts’s art too; in fact, they are more clearly evident in his oeuvre than in Wilkie’s. Topological recording of the Holy Land was also crucial to the endeavours of biblical archaeologists as they sought to support the desire of British and American Protestants seeking a vicarious experience of the places where Jesus and the people of the Scriptures lived and who wanted physical evidence of biblical sites. Referring to the American Protestant biblical archaeologist Edward Robinson’s 1841 Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petraea, based on his 1837 work in the Holy Land and associated reviews, Briggs argues that the assertion of Protestant rationalism over Catholic dogma and tradition was fundamental to biblical archaeology at the time of Wilkie. This interpretation is supported by contemporary texts and the mission of the PEF. However, Briggs also contends that this engagement in the Near East was inextricably connected to imperialist interests: More than Roberts’ work or popular visual culture, it is … biblical archaeology that sheds most light on the conceptually innovative decision Wilkie made to travel to the Holy Land and use first-hand observation in his bibli Wilkie, p. 339.  Briggs, p. 34

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cal paintings. Even so, all these projects were deeply implicated in fostering imperialist interests by demonstrating that the West’s claim to the Holy Land would rest not on relics and dogma, but on the superior rational, and even scientific, approach of Protestant scholars and artists.90

This argument does not appear to consider the sincere faith which motivated many people to seek to be in the places in which Jesus, the apostles and the prophets lived. Briggs’s argument is also based on contrasting Catholic and Protestant belief and practice but also, implicitly, aligns scientific, that is Western, ways of thinking with Protestantism. Actually the political situation of the West was far more complex, as neither France nor Russia was a Protestant country, yet they both embraced scientific rationalism and sought strategic influence in the Near Eastern region. Undoubtedly, though, projects such as the topographical mapping undertaken by members of the Royal Engineers provided information important for Imperial Britain’s strategic interests, as well as providing information useful for archaeological exploration. However the most powerful impetus for biblical archaeology was the Protestant desire to defend the literal truth of scripture against the onslaught of the newly developing approach of textual criticism. This ideology aligns with Wilkie’s emphasis on the importance of evidence and experience to verify biblical places and events. Briggs acknowledges, ‘his project was not without its tensions, and … these complicate any overly simplistic readings of the construction of Western “self” and Eastern “other” in and through Wilkie’s work’.91 Visual and textual evidence supports this conclusion and a nuanced analysis from multiple perspectives is essential in order to avoid assumptions or generalisations about Wilkie’s work or intention. At the time of Wilkie’s journey, ‘Orientalism’ was becoming a ‘Scottish specialism’. As evidence of this interest Tromans refers to William Allan’s depictions of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe, life in the Caucasus and ‘scenes of fabled Ottoman cruelty’ seen in paintings such as his Slave Market, Constantinople (1838). Tromans also categorises Roberts as an Orientalist artist. He argues that when the English artists John Frederick Lewis and William Muller, who were in the Near East at the same time as their Scottish compatriots, are also considered, Wilkie’s trip can be seen as part of an Orientalist movement which established an influential new iconography.  Briggs, p. 42  Briggs, p. 34.

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Works that Wilkie produced in Constantinople depicting members of the Ottoman court and British people wearing traditional Turkish clothing, such as The Infant Daughter of Admiral Walker in Turkish Dress (1840) and Mrs Elizabeth Young in Eastern Costume (1841) could suggest that Wilkie’s focus had shifted away from explicitly religious subjects and objectives.92 There is a simpler explanation, however, than a change of intention, given that he was unable to leave Constantinople due to the political situation already discussed, Wilkie simply took the opportunity to sketch the subjects which were available to him. His letters show he intended to use these costume sketches in fully realised paintings, including those of biblical scenes, but his death prevented this.

Socio-cultural Observations In further confirmation of Wilkie’s aesthetic interest in costume and his careful observation of the socio-cultural context in which he found himself, he wrote from Constantinople, ‘We have before us an Eastern and Asiatic people,—a people who possess neither art nor the feeling for art; and who eschew all idea of picturesque representation, but who in every respect, and at every turn, in every combination of raiment or dwelling, present that appearance the most suited of all to the painter’s art’.93 Apparently Wilkie had a narrow view of what constituted art, it had to be representational. He does not, however, deny an aesthetic awareness in the dress and architecture of these people. There is a certain irony that people whose beliefs do not enable narrative pictorial representation have become the ideal subject for such Christian depictions. According to Briggs, Wilkie’s statement is ‘a predictable Orientalist attitude to the Middle East, constructing it as a territory without art or art history, and even lacking the civilization to create art. The perceived lack of images was seen as resulting from religious dogma, but this was grudgingly admired as stemming from a faith stronger than that found in the West.’94 Briggs does not explore the religious dimension in detail but she does mention that many Protestants saw the apparent simplicity of Muslim worship and architecture as more reverential than the rituals of Catholicism.

 Tromans, p. 197.  Wilkie, p. 325. 94  Briggs, p. 49. 92 93

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Unfortunately Wilkie does not explicitly discuss the relationship between Muslim and Jewish beliefs and visual representation. It also needs to be noted that rather than seeing the absence of art as typifying the Oriental ‘other’, Wilkie actually saw a strong comparison with his native Scotland, writing, ‘“it is remarkable that my native district, where the impressions of early years were formed, could then scarcely supply a work of art by which the eye or the taste could either be excited or depressed”’.95 This situation in Scotland was partly due to the poverty of the area in which Wilkie grew up, but also to the strict views of Scottish Calvinism which, as we have seen, like orthodox Judaism and Islam, unequivocally rejected religious images. Cunningham commented, ‘“The Scottish divines of the day of the Covenant regarded Painting and Poetry as matters idolatrous and vain”’.96 Clearly Wilkie’s thinking was aligned with Scottish Enlightenment attitudes, as he sought to reinvent religious images in a way which was compatible with British Protestant thinking and which might, in fact, actually become an aid to the spiritual contemplation and devotional development of the faithful.

Wilkie’s Iconographic Intention Wilkie contemplates the profound influence of biblical paintings of the Italian Renaissance, as they established a visual vocabulary which people of subsequent centuries drew on to gain insights into the scriptural subjects of their devotion. He declares of his own visit to the Holy Land that his intention was to establish a new Protestant iconography, writing that the great scriptural paintings of the past which ‘profess to be representations of the people, the costumes, and scenes of Syria’ were done from the imagination of the artist and he asks, given the relative ease of travel in his own day, ‘whether a new style of Scripture subjects might not be required to correspond with our knowledge of these countries’ stating, ‘with that view, therefore, that our school of Protestant England may not be behind in such knowledge. … I have made this journey.’97 In other passages he notes that in his day it would be much easier to ascertain the veracity of visual images given the ease of travel which was not available to the contemporaries of the Renaissance masters. He admires  Briggs, p. 49.  Briggs, p. 49. 97  Briggs, p. 33. 95 96

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what they did achieve, whilst reinforcing the importance of knowledge over imagination, no matter how inspired the imagination. This Protestant emphasis on empirical knowledge would be facilitated by rapidly developing technologies, not only in means of transport but also photography. The events connected with this place … have supplied the great mass of subjects to Scripture painting, may here be traced … would the knowledge of these have helped the great painters? … they have done wonders without it … when they painted, their being incorrect could not be detected … but now that Syria is open … may not a system of Scripture painting be required corresponding, not to our ignorance, but to our improving knowledge of Syria?98

In the letter to Sir Robert Peel already cited, Wilkie reinforced the same key idea but also suggested that his empirical approach was being noticed, To the expounder of Scripture, and to the painter of Sacred History, this whole territory must supply what can be learnt no where else; and professors of art must make a stir to meet the ideas that travellers can so easily acquire. Indeed, since arriving here, I find a new species of criticism applied to our standard works of art; and my humble pursuits and inquiries appear to introduce somewhat novel subjects of discussion.99

In his long epistle to the Earl of Leven Wilkie provides a fascinating reflection on the authenticity of the attribution of scriptural sites, now open to new scrutiny from British travellers. He makes it clear that, not only is he of a different opinion from many Protestant tourists who treat the holy sites with scepticism or disdain, but that he has great respect for the piety of Empress Helena who was responsible for the construction of the much-contested Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Underlying the passage is the inner tension which seems to permeate many of Wilkie’s musings. His devotion is Protestant and based on the primacy of Scripture but he has a great reverence for historical place and an open-mindedness about historical events and legends. He also tries to hold in balance the evidence of reason and the emotion of experience. This tension is evident in the following passage in which he speaks of both the extant physical evidence

 Wilkie, p. 443.  Wilkie, p. 418

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and the scriptural identifications which are evident to him as he walks around Jerusalem. of all that is to be seen in Jerusalem, the reminiscences of the New Testament are to us the most interesting. Here, from the arrival of Jesus Christ, by the very path where he beheld the city and wept over it, to the time of the Passover, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, every turn and resting-place can be traced. For the preservation of the details of some of these, we are indebted to the piety of the Roman Empress Helena, who built a church over the entire of Mount Calvary, enclosing the rock where our Saviour was laid … one can scarcely agree with some of our Protestant tourists, who have affected to treat them with doubt, or to make it an object of indifference whether they are correct or not … whoever walks around Jerusalem will have his reason as well as his feelings impressed; will find, not merely the hills and valleys, but the rocks, the walls, and the very stones seeming to rise up as unchanging witnesses of the correctness of the evangelical narration.100

Writing to J. A. Smith, Esq. MP, from Alexandria in April 1841, Wilkie again contemplates Protestant attitudes to the Holy Sepulchre and the impact of sacred geography, ‘under-rated by our Protestant writers. … It is true the minute details may be erroneous and the adoration paid to them may be fallacious; but lawyers know the force of identity of place and time as matter of evidence; and readers of Scripture, who have been there, well know the impression the knowledge of the situation gives to the words of the Evangelists.’101 Encapsulating his approach of drawing on reason, not just emotion or physical senses, Wilkie wrote to his sister in an observation of the picturesque reminiscent of Roberts, ‘in the Holy Land and in Syria … the objects we see are of the most striking kind—picturesque beyond belief. One only wishes to be all eye and all ear, and with the full power to record what impresses the mind in such a country.’102 Again expressing his view of the pre-eminence of experiential knowledge, Wilkie wrote to Thomas Philips from Jerusalem extending his frequent musings on Christian art of the past to include that of Britain. Again wondering how direct experience of the Holy Land might have influenced his artistic predecessors, he wrote, ‘In our own  Wilkie, pp. 432–3.  Wilkie, pp. 456–7. 102  Wilkie, pp. 395–6. 100 101

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country you and I can fancy that some of our talented brethren … had their devotion to art been helped by such knowledge, might have begun a style new to the public, and capable of advancing, as an original system of Scripture art’.103 Wilkie wrote forcefully to Collins of the Protestant need to find physical evidence of scripture, our art, instead of supplying the mere fancied illustration, may give what this place so strongly supplies—a collateral evidence of the truth of the sacred writings; may give fresh proof of the correctness of the sacred narrators in what they knew, by showing their accuracy in what we know they must have seen … evangelical Syria is entirely unrepresented … with respect to the great crowd of scriptural representations by which, with a sort of glut, all future modern art must be inundated, I need only say a Martin Luther, in painting, is as much called for as in theology, to sweep away the abuses by which our divine pursuit is encumbered.104

Much as he admired the religious paintings of the Italian Renaissance, which had shaped the European visual idea of the Bible, he knew that they were products of imagination, albeit often the imagination of genius. They perpetuated church tradition, not first-hand experience of the Holy Land. Clearly for Wilkie the purpose of Christian art should be to highlight the truth of the Bible in the hearts and minds of believers. Wilkie’s illuminating letter to Sir Robert Peel, written from Jerusalem in March 1841, highlights his pivotal concern about the veracity of traditional Scripture Painting and emphasises the motivation for his journey, ‘It is a fancy or belief that the art of our time and of our British people may reap some benefit, that has induced me to take this journey’. He says it is ‘to see, to inquire, and to judge,’ whether future artists might ‘be required, in the advance and spread of our knowledge, to refer at once to the localities of Scripture events, when the great work is to be essayed of representing Scripture history’. He goes on to again express his amazement that ‘none of the great painters to whom the world has hitherto looked for the visible appearance of Scripture scenes and feelings’ had actually been to the Holy Land.105 Wilkie’s knowledge of history is revealed in his Journal when he suggests the influence on visual imagery of the observation of Near Eastern  Wilkie, p. 441.  Wilkie, pp. 426–7. 105  Wilkie, pp. 415–6. 103 104

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traders in Renaissance Venice saying, ‘Veronese, Titian, Giorgione, and Sebastian del Piombo, all Venetians, have by commerce, and immediate intercourse with the Levant, succeeded in giving in their work a nearer verisimilitude to an Eastern people’. Although working in a different cultural context from the Venetians, Wilkie also proposes that Michelangelo, from his ‘generalising style’, has ‘brought some of his prophets and sybils to resemble the old Jews about the streets of the Holy City’.106 Wilkie’s comment about Levantine traders also assumes an unchanging people, people who, to the Venetians and then to the nineteenth-century British, would still provide an accurate indication of the appearance and behaviour of the contemporaries of Moses and Jesus. Interestingly it was in Ireland in 1835 that Wilkie saw the scenes of contemporary life as a link with the past and later this attitude informed his engagement with Syria. In both contexts the lifestyles of the contemporary inhabitants were seen by Wilkie as windows onto remote times and this perception was reflected in his ‘Scripture paintings’.107 Wilkie’s Journal reveals his intellectual and spiritual struggle to reconcile assumed continuity with observed change and the powerful influence of past Scripture painting with the potential influence of paintings based on empirical evidence. In the letter to Peel he wrote, ‘the people, the Jew, the Arab, and the more humble and destitute, who never change, recall, by their appearance, a period of antiquity in everything removed from the present time. But besides the habits of man, and the stately fashion of his dwelling, which here bear the mark of no modern date, there are other features that carry the impress of sacred history which scarcely any time can change.’108

Historical Accuracy and Contemporary Reality Yet, in an apparently contradictory comment, grappling with the idea of change in the Holy Land Wilkie wrote, ‘the supposition that the manners of Scripture are precisely represented by the present race in Syria, it is too sweeping to be borne out by what we actually know’.109 Wilkie’s speculations became quite specific when, for example, he pondered whether the  Wilkie, p. 447.  Errington, Tribute to Wilkie, p. 82. 108  Wilkie, p. 417. 109  Wilkie, p. 448. 106 107

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Old Testament Jews and the Apostles sat on the ground or on chairs, or slept in beds or on mats and whether the women were ‘then as much secluded from public view as they are now in these countries’. He discovered that the learned monks and rabbis were generally of the view that the people of Jesus’s day would have sat on the floor to dine. Wilkie was perturbed by this, noting, ‘as the synagogue upon Mount Zion is filled with seats, like a church, we may hope that the mode of sitting of the Apostles at the table of our Lord may not, by any new information, be found to be different from what Lionardo (sic) da Vinci has painted it’.110 Wilkie cannot bear the idea of destroying the credibility of great religious art, especially not hugely significant works such as Leonardo’s Last Supper, but there is a tension for him because he will not allow himself to ignore the evidence of reason and intellectual enquiry, or the evidence of his own eyes. In his Journal entry from Bethlehem he wrote that he had drawn several figures from a Greek mosaic of the Ascension in the ‘church over the manger’ where he ‘tried to trace the Syrian dress in the figures’ saying that if they could be washed so as to be better seen he had ‘no doubt they would throw much light on the habits of that early period’.111 Adding another dimension to the discussion, Wilkie wrote in his Journal of interchanges with learned Christian and Jewish clergy about artistic representations of scripture. In this context he reinforces the priority of illuminating scripture, as the reason for such art. This is further evidence that Wilkie’s motivation for the Holy Land journey is primarily religious. In the same passage he also emphasises the importance of accurately representing the current region of Syria, saying: It must not be our purpose to detract from what art has done, but to add. Every discussion and new information must do good, since it must draw the attention of the world upon our art as a means for the great and useful purpose of the study and comprehension of the Holy Scriptures. But there is another application of art: if difficult to show what Syria was in the prophetic and apostolic times, there may yet be the greatest interest in showing what Syria is now.112

Wilkie’s reason and experience tell him that the land he is visiting is not identical to the one in which Jesus walked, yet so much he observes appears  Wilkie, p. 391.  Wilkie, p. 434. 112  Wilkie, pp. 427–8. 110 111

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to resonate with biblical descriptions that he continually experiences cognitive conflict. He hopes that painting the contemporary Holy Land might inspire other British Christians to undertake the journey and partake of the experience for themselves. Wilkie’s perspective was, of course, influenced by the dominant nineteenth-century discourse of a changeless ‘East’. This perspective was encapsulated by Bendiner in his suggestion that part of the attraction of the Near East for mid-nineteenth-century Britain was seeing it, ‘as a living museum of religious history’.113 Ultimately Wilkie found himself unable to reject the religious paintings of the Old Masters. I concur with Tromans who suggests that once Wilkie was actually in the Holy Land he realised how ‘irreplaceable were those classic images of the past, how they indeed constructed reality as much as reflected it’. Wilkie wrote to Peel from Jerusalem, ‘“nothing here requires any revolution in our opinions of the finest works of art; with all their discrepancies of detail they are yet constantly recalled by what is here before us … the indescribable tone of Rembrandt is brought to mind at every turn, whether in the street, the synagogue, or the Holy Sepulchre”’.114 Apparently the atmosphere and emotional impact of the experience finally overshadowed the need for historical veracity. Based on Wilkie’s writing it is evident that his emphasis changed depending on the personal impact of any given experience in the Holy Land and the extent to which he believed places he visited actually corresponded to sites made holy by the presence of Jesus. Wilkie’s tone and the frankness of the opinions he expressed in letters and his Journal also tended to be tailored to the particular reader and circumstance. Nevertheless, for this British Protestant, Jerusalem would always be both earthly city and heavenly city. The emotional and spiritual impact of walking where he believed Jesus walked is reflected in the following excerpt from the previously quoted letter to Sir Robert Peel: I was particularly struck, as we got near to Jerusalem, with the beautiful aspect of … Bethany, the abode of Mary and Martha, and the scene of the raising of their brother Lazarus from the dead … by a path often frequented by our Saviour, and which opens upon the most beautiful view there is of Jerusalem … the following verse (St Luke, ch. xix.) refers to—

113  Kenneth Bendiner, ‘David Roberts in the Near East: Social and Religious Themes’, Art History, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 1983, 67–81 (p. 70). 114  Tromans, pp. 203–4.

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‘And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes.’ Changed as this holy city must be since these words were uttered—her sovereignty gone, her people despised; and of her temple not one stone left upon another; yet, shorn of her beams, this sacred place of her grandeur presents one of the most striking spectacles I have ever beheld.115

In the same letter Wilkie wrote, ‘being permitted to see with my own natural eyes, what Jerusalem in our day can still present to us. Here after centuries of ruin and suffering, Jerusalem exists in her greatness.’116

Wilkie as Interpreter of the Holy Land Wilkie’s attitude in the Holy Land is argued by Briggs to represent Said’s notion of ‘the Romantic idea of restorative reconstruction’. She explains Said’s contention as meaning, ‘Western observers of the Middle East were typically seeking some truth about their own history and culture in the region’s multi-layered present’. Wilkie certainly sought such truth as he strove to develop a new Protestant iconography inspired by the present Holy Land. Briggs argues, though, that as Wilkie sought direct references to the New Testament in contemporary people and places, ‘Local history, cultures and populations that were not seen as helpful in achieving this vision were sidelined and ignored’. It is difficult to confirm this interpretation when carefully considering a range of Wilkie’s sketches and the contexts in which he produced them. For example, he frequently sketched the faces and costumes of Ottoman Turks. It must be said, though, that he did intend to use these drawings in later paintings of biblical subjects. The previously analysed portraits of Egyptian Pasha, Mehemet Ali and Ottoman Sultan, Abd-ul-Mejid were certainly not biblical subjects but products of the sitters seeking to be portrayed. His letters, journal entries and art works reveal that, throughout his journey in the Holy Land, Wilkie grappled with a tension between artistic tradition, personal experience and religious faith. Tromans’ contention that eventually Wilkie realised that ‘the artist’s version of history—even divine history—had its own language and its own authority, which neither  Wilkie, pp. 417–8.  Wilkie, p. 416.

115 116

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books nor even experience necessarily had the capacity to reform’,117 helps to explain the constant tension in Wilkie’s writing between personal experience of the Holy Land and the tradition of Christian art. Twenty-five years after Wilkie’s death, W.  M. Rossetti wrote ‘sacred art has utterly failed unless it produces a sacred impression’.118 As he is chiefly remembered as a painter of British genre and history, perhaps Wilkie did fail in his aim to produce a distinctly Protestant iconography for Scripture painting but the few works which he was able to produce before his death, as well as his letters and Journals, certainly suggest a sincere desire to capture something of the place which was, for him, resonant with the sacred events of the Bible. As Wilkie died in 1841 he was not able to participate in what Giebelhausen says was a time, from the mid-1840s to 1860, during which ‘religious painting was rethought and in which a naturalist Protestant practice—best exemplified by William Holman Hunt—emerged’.119 However, although his untimely death meant he could not produce his intended revolutionary ‘Scripture paintings’, Wilkie nevertheless made a clear contribution to British visual culture of his time. His earlier works showed him to be ‘a pioneer in visualising history as experience rather than as action’.120 Cunningham’s personal assessments have to be considered in the context of his great admiration for Wilkie but even though tinged with personal bias, his statement that Wilkie ‘was the darling artist of the people, learned or illiterate, for he spoke to all degrees of knowledge and to all varieties of taste’, reflects the humanity of Wilkie’s paintings and the perception of real life they conveyed.

 Tromans, p. 204.  W. M. Rossetti in Michaela Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible—Representation and Belief in Mid-Victorian Britain, (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), p. 11. 119  Giebelhausen, p. 11. 120  Tromans, p. 164. 117 118

CHAPTER 7

William Holman Hunt: Archaeology, Theology and Biblical Typology

The intellectual and theological frameworks and influence of William Holman Hunt, the ‘Painter of Christ’, were significantly different from those of his two artistic predecessors who travelled in the Holy Land. Whilst continuing the quest for a truly British and Protestant iconography and style of religious paintings, Hunt differed from Roberts and Wilkie in significant ways. Most notably, this was evident in his development of complex typological symbolism, expressed through a visual realism that some of his contemporaries found shocking. Throughout the several decades of Hunt’s artistic life he developed a body of work which made a significant and highly original contribution to British Protestant visual culture. Various High, Broad and Low Church Anglican theologies have been attributed to Hunt, illustrating how the same visual and textual evidence has been used by scholars and critics to draw contradictory conclusions. He reimagined the depiction of Jesus, presenting Him as an exemplar of the Protestant work ethic and, in The Light of the World, he portrayed the spiritual Christ which became an iconic image in Protestant visual culture throughout the British Empire. Furthermore, Hunt’s religious paintings incorporated complex typological symbolism which embodied abstract theological concepts, not just narrative re-tellings of biblical stories or a focus on sacred geography. For Hunt firsthand experience of the Holy Land was essential in order to paint religious subjects which embodied both historical and spiritual authenticity. Aesthetically, and in his focus on symbolic representation, as © The Author(s) 2020 A. M. Burritt, Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41261-6_7

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a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt differed markedly from Roberts and Wilkie. Whilst the philosophy and aesthetic of Romanticism, with its emphasis on the grandeur of nature and the passage of time and the subject matter of history and landscape, dominated British visual culture in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood sought to focus on minute details of the environment. Their aesthetic was dominated by sharply defined form and brilliant colour. Hunt lived at a later time and in a different political and imperial environment from that of Roberts and Wilkie. He also travelled to the Near East informed by new writings in theology and new discoveries in archaeology. This was a time when scientific and theological challenges and opportunities unknown to Roberts and Wilkie were emerging. Not surprisingly then, Hunt’s artistic and intellectual focus differed from that of his two forerunners. Hunt aligned himself with an intellectual climate intent on enlightened and reasoned understanding of the Gospels and the life and historical context of Jesus. He visited the Holy Land four times, in 1854–55, 1869–72, 1876–78 and a final visit to Jerusalem from March to May 1892 when the celebrations of Greek Easter were taking place. It was during this latter visit that he conceived the idea for his painting, The Miracle of the Holy Fire, a religious event we have noted Roberts wrote about with some scepticism. Thus Hunt spent substantially more time actually in the region than did either Roberts or Wilkie. In his 1905 Memoir, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt wrote, ‘I am persuaded that my decision to realise my purpose of painting in the East, at whatever cost it might be, was no rash one. It was certain that the time had come when others in the world of thought besides myself were moved by the new spirit, which could not allow the highest of all interests to remain as an uninvestigated revelation.’1 This statement expresses the importance of firsthand experience of the Holy Land for Hunt. Primarily he wanted to engage with the biblical region through the methodology of reason and empirical evidence. Like many of his British contemporaries, Hunt viewed aspects of the Near East as being like windows on the ancient world but he shared a concern that this was rapidly changing, a perception which gave urgency to his endeavours. He wrote, ‘All traditional manners were threatening to pass away, together with ancient costume and hereditary taste; I saw that 1  William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Vol. II (London: Macmillan and Co., 1905), pp. 408–9.

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in another generation it would be too late to reconstruct the past, save in rural and desert life, if even there.’2 Hunt wrote in his Memoir that in Cairo he re-read Herodotus, Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, the Bible and Lane’s Modern Egyptians3 and he reflected that what he saw in Cairo made the ‘records of ancient history clearer’.4 Although his Memoir, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was published in 1905 and therefore was obviously a retrospective discussion of Hunt’s thoughts, motivations and conversations of decades earlier, it certainly suggests a strong personal faith and a mind open to intellectual enquiry, as well as a consistently Protestant desire for evidence, experience and the application of reason in matters of religion. Hunt’s friend, Augustus Egg, tried to convince him not to go to the East or, if he must, to go only for a few months, as Egg was concerned the interruption and change of subject matter would have a detrimental effect on Hunt’s career. Hunt remarked that Roberts and Wilkie had both made only short visits and he felt that, even if he had he lived to do so, Wilkie’s sketches ‘would have had no great service for pictures’. Hunt believed that a longer period of time spent in the Holy Land would be necessary to develop the religious style and iconography he sought. Hunt told Egg he had wanted to go to Syria since hearing the New Testament as a school boy. Tellingly, given Hunt’s interest in scientific ideas and archaeology, and the contested interpretations of his personal faith, about which more will be said later, he wrote, although the revelations of science, and more transiently the conclusions drawn from these by theorists and commentators, had often compelled me to reconsider my earlier understanding of the story, yet the doings of that

2  William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Vol. I (London: Macmillan and Co., 1905), p. 377. 3  Marcia Pointon, ‘The artist as ethnographer: Holman Hunt and the Holy Land’, in PreRaphaelites Re-viewed, ed. by Marcia Pointon (Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press, 1989), 22–44 (p.  43): Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, Modern Egypt and Thebes: being a description of Egypt, including the information required for travellers in that country, 2 vols., London, 1843 new edition published in Handbook for travellers, 1847, eleven editions between 1843 and 1907; The architecture of ancient Egypt … with remarks on the early progress of architecture, etc., London, 1850; Edward Williams Lane, An account of the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians, 2 vols., London, 1836; eight editions between 1836 and 1906.) 4  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 377.

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Divine Master in Syria never ceased to claim my homage. The pursuit of painting only gave my childish Palestine project distincter purpose.

Further, Hunt wrote, recalling his discussion with Egg, of ‘my respect for impartial investigation, built upon confidence, that truth, whatever it be, is above all price, and my desire is very strong to use my powers to make more tangible Jesus Christ’s history and teachings’.5 Continuing his comments to Egg, about the history and teachings of Jesus, Hunt wrote, Art has often illustrated the theme, but it has surrounded it with many enervating fables, and perverted the heroic drama with feeble interpretation. We have every reason to believe that the Father of all, demands that every generation should contribute its quota of knowledge and wisdom to attain the final purpose, and however small my mite may be, I wish to do my poor part, and in pursuing this aim I ought not surely to serve art less perfectly.6

Archaeology and the Search for Truth Notably Hunt’s various visits to the Holy Land spanned the second half of the nineteenth century, a time when new ideas in science, theology and archaeology were challenging traditional ways of thinking in Britain. Also crucially, Hunt’s personal religious beliefs differed in significant ways from those of Roberts and Wilkie. The various conflicting interpretations of Hunt’s religious opinions will be explored in this chapter in the context of specific events, paintings and writing. As a founding member of the Pre-­ Raphaelite Brotherhood, who strove to adhere to a particular set of artistic ideals regarding subject and practice, Hunt shaped, and was shaped by, a specific ideology regarding the purpose and nature of art. This ideology, according to Ruskin, was that they ‘“draw either what they see, or what they suppose might have been the actual facts of the scene they desire to represent.”’7 Another influence on Hunt’s religious paintings was the new discipline of Near Eastern archaeology. It was hoped that this scientific development would contribute to the search for biblical ‘truth’ and ‘facts’. The  Hunt, Vol. I, pp. 348–9.  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 349. 7  Tim Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 131. 5 6

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conceptual framework around nineteenth-century archaeological excavation in the Near East, the ‘Holy Land’, is far more complex than being simply an endeavour to prove the historical veracity of biblical texts, although this was certainly an important catalyst for much archaeological activity. For example, Larsen argues, referring to the writing of ‘the Father of Assyriology’, Austen Henry Layard, that Layard was not a conventional Christian, ‘on a personal quest to prove the Bible true’.8 Hunt was aware of Layard’s work and publications and sought, unsuccessfully, to accompany him to Assyria as the expedition draughtsman. In his Memoir Hunt wrote of how much he appreciated meeting Layard in 1853. The archaeologist had recently returned to England from ‘adventurous wanderings and his invaluable excavations in the Mesopotamian valley’. Hunt recalls that he told Layard how, in 1851, he had missed out on the appointment as draughtsman to the archaeologist’s expedition due to being one day late with his application. He wrote of telling Layard ‘that my passion for the East he loved so much had not waned, for I was then on the point of going to Syria’. Like Roberts and Wilkie before him, Hunt was to benefit from the British political and diplomatic presence in the region. Layard responded to Hunt’s enthusiasm. ‘With spontaneous good nature he thereupon gave me advice, and furnished me with letters to several officials of high standing in my probable line of route.’9 As an archaeologist at the beginning of the scientific discipline, Layard’s influence was considerable. His archaeological explorations in Mesopotamia, popularised by the 1849 publication of his Nineveh and its Remains, had led to a developing understanding in Britain of the potential of archaeological excavation to increase knowledge of the past. New approaches in archaeology led to a significant shift in thinking away from the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century understanding of exploration solely for the purpose of collecting antiquities for museums and the homes of the wealthy elite. Larsen argues that Layard was primarily concerned with the diagnostic significance of objects he found and that he viewed the Bible as a possible source to inform their interpretation, not the reverse.10

8  Timothy Larsen, ‘Austen Henry Layard’s Nineveh: The Bible and Archaeology in Victorian Britain’, Journal of Religious History, 33 (1), March 2009, 66–81 (p. 77). 9  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 346. 10  Larsen, p. 78.

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Although apparently not in Layard’s case, demonstrating Biblical veracity was a central motivator for many Victorian artists, archaeologists and travellers. The search for material evidence in the archaeological record accorded with the desire for paintings to reflect firsthand experience of the Biblical lands.11 This position, of course, aligns with the previously discussed Protestant view that reason and personal experience were important adjuncts to faith. In his Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt noted the importance of observation ‘denying all that could not be tangibly proved’.12 The context for this statement is fundamental though, in understanding the development of Hunt’s thinking over time. At this stage, at the founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) in 1848, Hunt writes of the PRB declaration which claimed there was no immortality except through ‘genius or heroism’. He says they were ‘still under the influence of Voltaire, Gibbon, Byron and Shelley’.13 It seems they had adopted the Enlightenment obligation of questioning the foundation and evidence of all ideas. Having decided to undertake ‘fresh research in art’ regardless of the authority of tradition, Hunt says he and his companions felt compelled to ‘try what the result would be in matters metaphysical’.14 Hunt’s belief in the application of reason and experience to matters of faith is key to understanding his religious artworks and much of his writing.15 Hunt’s awareness of archaeological excavations taking place in the Near East enabled him to incorporate elements of recently discovered material culture into his paintings. Sometimes, however, such inclusions functioned to create an evocative sense of time and place, rather than being historically accurate. This point will be discussed specifically in relation to Hunt’s 1854–60 painting, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (Appendix Fig. A.3).

11  Simon Coleman, ‘A Tale of Two Centres? Representing Palestine to the British in the Nineteenth Century’, Mobilities, Vol. 2, No. 3, November 2007, 331–345 (p. 339). 12  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 158. 13  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 158. 14  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 158. 15  Carol Jacobi, William Holman Hunt, Painter, Painting, Paint (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 43.

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Hunt’s Views on Religion and Science The tension between naturalism, spirituality, Biblical literalism and the sacramental, the place of Biblical typology and the awareness and influence of scientific and archaeological discoveries and theories such as those of Darwin, Layard and Flinders-Petrie, all informed artistic and religious discourse and criticism, artistic practice and popular thought during Hunt’s artistic life. Hunt was actively engaged in the current debates around the relationship between religion and science and religion and art. For him the scientific idea of evolution as the unfolding of God’s creation aligned without conflict with the theological concept of typology. As this approach to hermeneutics is crucial in understanding much of Hunt’s religious art, I will discuss it fully in the context of the symbolism employed by Hunt in specific paintings. Hunt presented a paper entitled ‘Religion and Art’ to the Church Congress of the Church of England. The paper, in which he discussed his views on the important role of religious art and wrote in support of evolutionary theory, was then published in The Contemporary Review in 1897: every order of creation progressed upwards from the roughest forms to supreme gracefulness, for when the problem of originating a new genus of life had been attained, it was often without beauty, often even a mere lump; then the heavenly artistic mind began to work out its developments; it fashioned these by slow steps into exquisite shapes; it decorated the surfaces … charming first the fastidious eye of the creature’s fellows—the primary purpose, as naturalists declare—and then that of far higher intelligences also to the end of time.16

As a seeker of knowledge, Hunt professed a strong belief in the potential of science to enhance human life. In his Memoir Hunt wrote ‘the aid of inexhaustible science should be used to convey new messages of hope to fresh broods of men’.17 Again in the paper to the Church Congress, Hunt wrote critically of the Church’s historical condemnation of great scientists:

16  William Holman Hunt, ‘Religion and Art’, The contemporary review, 71 (January 1897), 41–52 (p. 47). 17  Hunt, Vol. I, pp. 148–9.

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Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo came forward saying, ‘And the Lord spake unto me’, but the priests would have none of it. When the oracles cease to speak, a church is no longer living. ‘as the Lord liveth’—not lived—is the cry of the messenger of the Almighty, and our English Church, with the ruin of the elder Church before its eyes, was warned to welcome the prophets of her own day.18

Hunt was able to see connections between the widespread articulation of new ideas and social and cultural changes. He discerned a demonstrable relationship between the refusal of many clergy to embrace evolution as a way of understanding God’s creative process and the changing attitude of many ordinary people to Church authority. As an example of this thinking, Hunt observes in his 1897 paper, ‘the opposition to what were distinct revelations of God’s manner of conducting creation has been a serious cause of that loss of influence of the clergy upon the laity which cannot be ignored’. However, on an optimistic note he adds, reflecting on changing official attitudes in the Church, ‘The steady operation of a wider policy will doubtless soon have its beneficial effect’.19 Of course Hunt was not the only public figure to comment on the issues of the Church’s reception of scientific thought. Regarding the discussion in the Church of England of the role of scientific enquiry, in 1868 Frederic William Farrar (later Dean of Canterbury) wrote similarly to Hunt of the critical attitude of many clergy, ‘what … have been the main new sciences of this generation which can by any possibility intersect the orbit of theology? They are of course geology, ethnology, pre-historic archaeology, physiology in some of its branches, and the science of language. Is it possible for anyone familiar with the contemporary literature of this century, to deny that every one of those has been ushered in with a burst of clerical opposition?’20 Like Hunt, Farrar understood the importance of viewing the Bible as a product of its historical, social and cultural context. He also realised that scripture attempted to answer questions of why, not how. For Farrar, science was not the enemy of religion; it was a wonderful new source of knowledge which could inform faith. His view of science as a further revelation of God’s truth aligned with the dominant contemporary scientific  Hunt, ‘Religion and Art’, p. 47.  Hunt, ‘Religion and Art’, p. 47. 20  Farrer in James R.  Moore, ed. Religion in Victorian Britain. Volume III: Sources, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 437–438. 18 19

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and social thinking that human history, like geological time, was a process of continuous evolution. This was a view to which Hunt adhered and which is reflected in his choice of typological symbolism as a key vehicle to convey meaning in his religious paintings. Farrar argued that ‘Science can be refuted by science only … we must give up our schemes of reconciliation … of making the words of the Bible bear all kinds of non-natural sense, and mean what they never have meant’. He voiced the belief that ‘Science is constantly performing great services to true religion’ saying, ‘It has deepened indefinitely our sense of the mysteries around us’. Most significantly and controversially, Farrar stated, ‘I must say that God, by the discoveries of science, has revealed to us more fresh truth respecting His own glory than all theology has declared for us since the last of the apostles’.21 Typological interpretations of scripture, based as they are on a belief in unfolding revelation, also influenced acceptance of new theories of evolution, supporting concepts of biological development. The Evangelical theologian and exponent of biblical typology, Patrick Fairbairn, claimed ‘the book of the earth, like the Bible, was arranged by God according to principles of progressive revelation’.22 As Landow observes, however, ‘Typologically based theories of biological evolution, which are intrinsically teleological … have no room for Darwin’s principle of natural selection’.23 Hunt participated in the heated debate about biblical literalism and the significance of new scientific evidence. He wrote in support of the view that it was possible to reconcile the Tanak, the Hebrew Bible, and the concept of geological time. In his letter of 17 September 1872 Hunt criticises Darwin and other scientists as ‘imperfectly informed “know alls”’ but he says ‘I in fact never got far enough to conclude that Darwin’s theory was irreconcilable with the idea of a divine Father’s merciful presiding’. This view was shared by Browning and Tennyson whom Hunt admired.24 He wrote that in 1852 his ‘championship of Tennyson was still

 Farrer in Moore, pp. 439–441, 443.  George, P. Landow, Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows (Boston, Mass. USA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 10. 23  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 11. 24  George, P. Landow, William Holman Hunt and Typological Symbolism (London: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 132. 21 22

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challenged’.25 Later evolutionary theory after The Descent of Man ­published in 1871 made such interpretations theologically problematic for many.26

New Challenges to Religious Thinking Whilst Hunt was travelling to the Near East to paint scenes inspired by his view of the Bible, British and European scientists were continuing to develop new ideas about the natural world and human history, based on ongoing exploration and the recording of material culture, geology, geography, flora and fauna. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) and geologist Sir Joseph Prestwich’s paper on the ‘Antiquity of Man’ (1859) had huge implications for biblical scholars, archaeologists and ordinary Christians. The implausibility of literal interpretation of the Old Testament was highlighted by Bishop John William Colenso of Natal who applied arithmetic to illustrate the unlikelihood of various numbers in the Hebrew Scriptures being possible. In 1865 Colenso’s ‘people’s edition’ of On the Pentateuch was published. In the advertisement for this edition Colenso wrote, ‘I have desired to place, in a clear and intelligible form, before the eyes of the general reader, the main arguments … proving the unhistorical character, the later origin, and the compound authorship, of the five books usually attributed to Moses’.27 Attempts to understand the Bible from the perspective of its historical and socio-cultural context influenced the development of both higher criticism and Near Eastern archaeology in the second half of the nineteenth century. For some people archaeology was seen as a method of discovering new information which could potentially challenge a literal interpretation of the Bible, while for others it was hoped that archaeology would uncover evidence to corroborate biblical text. Significantly in this context, the Assyriologist, clergyman and comparative philologist Sayce wrote, ‘The facts of oriental archaeology have nothing to do with theology. The archaeologist writes for the historian, not for the homilist or the defender of dogma.’28 In 1865, writing on the theology of his time, Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster wrote, ‘We must get rid of our preconceived  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 326.  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 11. 27  Moore, p. 34. 28  Thomas W. Davis, Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 25–26. 25 26

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theories of what the Bible ought to be, in order to make out what it really is’. He maintained the importance of finding out ‘what are the actual characteristics of the Bible itself. Find out what the sacred writers really said— what they really intended.’29 From the 1860s the hermeneutical approach of ‘higher criticism’ began to have an impact on British religious thinking. German theologian, Julius Wellhausen, built on earlier identification of four sources for the Pentateuch in developing this method for the study and analysis of the formation of Biblical texts. In denying the traditional authorship of Moses, Wellhausen introduced a developmental model instead of a literal interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures.30 This new approach to Old Testament hermeneutics was accepted by some in the churches as reflecting a developing understanding of God’s progressive revelation to His people.31 This view considered the Old Testament to be about the way in which God had prepared His people through their covenantal relationship to be ready to receive the full revelation of God in Christ. This understanding also supported the important theological understanding of typology. Biblical criticism sought to apply literary criticism, philology and historical knowledge to biblical hermeneutics. Higher criticism appealed to the Broad Church movement but there was a strong negative reaction by many other Anglicans who saw it as excessively liberal. The full process of higher critical study was not widely accepted in English academic circles until Samuel R.  Driver, a Hebrew professor at Oxford, published his Introduction to the Old Testament in 1891.32

Imperial Interest in the Near East By the late 1850s the religious and political importance of the Near East was such that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert decided that the heir to the throne, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, should visit the region to learn more about its history and religions and to meet current rulers and diplomats. The Crimean War (1854–55) had led to greater public interest in the politics of the region, partly influenced by the British photographer  A.P. Stanley in Moore, p. 41.  Thomas W. Davis, p. 22. 31  Horton Davies, Worship and theology in England: From Newman to Martineau, 1850–1900, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 182. 32  Thomas W. Davis, p. 22. 29 30

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Roger Fenton’s photographs of the conflict. These were exhibited in London in 1855–56 and twice viewed by the Prince of Wales.33 Recent photographs, too, had stimulated interest in the Holy Land. The Prince of Wales acquired Frith’s two-volume work Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Described (1859) and Queen Victoria acquired Frith’s later four-­ volume work Egypt, Sinai and Palestine (1862).34 In 1862 the Prince made his trip accompanied by the Reverend Dr Arthur Stanley, Oxford Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, later Dean of Westminster and a Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) founder. The photographer, Francis Bedford, was also chosen to accompany the group, and the Court Circular 5 February 1862 stated this was ‘for the purpose of taking photographic views of the landscapes, figures, and architecture of the various remarkable places that may be visited’.35 When he visited Masjid al-Khalil (Mosque of al-Khalil) at al-Khalil (Hebron) the Illustrated London News 3 May 1862, reported, ‘The Prince entered the mosque and had this privilege of standing where no infidel has stood since the crusades’.36 The Prince visited every major church and mosque in Jerusalem and the major biblical sites and ruins of the Holy Land.37 Queen Victoria gave Bedford the right to use his negatives from the tour commercially. He published three portfolios in twenty-one parts, each containing at least eight prints.38 An exhibition of Bedford’s photographs from the Near Eastern trip opened on 23 July 1862 and his work received critical acclaim and commercial success.39 The Prince of Wales kept a journal during his trip and his respectful comments suggest that, like many of his contemporaries, he pondered the historical and spiritual nature of what he saw. On 2 April 1862, he wrote, ‘We rode to the Garden of Gethsemane … from thence, we rode up to the 33  Sophie Gordon, ‘Francis Bedford (1815–94) photographer to the Prince of Wales’, in Cairo to Constantinople: Francis Bedford’s photographs of the Middle East, written by Sophie Gordon with contributions by Badr El Hage and Alessandro Nassini (London: Royal Collection Trust), 13–35 (p. 15). 34  Gordon, p. 245, footnote 64. 35  Gordon, ‘Francis Bedford (1815–94) photographer to the Prince of Wales’ in Cairo to Constantinople, p. 16. 36  El Hage, Badr, ‘A tour in the East’, in Cairo to Constantinople: Francis Bedford’s photographs of the Middle East, written by Sophie Gordon with contributions by Badr El Hage and Alessandro Nassini (London: Royal Collection Trust), 36–53 (p. 43). 37  El Hage, p. 45 38  El Hage, p. 46. 39  El Hage, p. 48.

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Mount of Olives. … We saw Jerusalem to perfection.’40 When visiting a mosque on 7 April, he wrote it was ‘very interesting as no Xtian (sic) before us had ever been in it, … we were shown the Tombs of Abraham, & Sarah, on one side of the entrance, then that of Jacob & Lear [sic] & that of Joseph. The Mahometans venerate these immensely, and hitherto have prevented any Xtian going in, but with the help of the Pasha, as a g[rea]t favour I & my party … were let in.’41 As had Roberts, Wilkie and many other travellers, the Prince also pondered the question of the historical accuracy of sites he was shown. In Sebastieh (Samaria) the Prince’s 14 April journal entry says, ‘We saw the ruins of a Xtian Church there, & the tomb of John the Babtist (sic) was shown to us, & it is possible that it may be correct’.42 The Prince of Wales’s journey and the increasing availability and distribution of photographs served to stimulate further public and artistic interest in the Holy Land. By 1865 there was such interest in the region that the British public were ready to endorse official exploration of Palestine. In 1864 Charles Wilson of the British Ordnance Survey had made exciting discoveries surveying and mapping Jerusalem. These discoveries were known about by the educated British public as Sir Henry James, head of the Ordnance Service, wrote about them in The Times 31 December 1864.43 When the PEF was formally established at a meeting in London on 22 June 1865 the Archbishop of York stated the principles on which it would be based: 1. That whatever was undertaken should be carried out on scientific principles 2. That the Society should, as a body, abstain from controversy 3. That it should not be started, nor should it be conducted, as a religious Society.44 In spite of these professed objective and scientific aims, as discussed earlier in this volume, there was a clear belief expressed by the President of  Gordon, ‘The Holy Land’, in Cairo to Constantinople, 121–149 (p. 131).  Gordon, p. 140. 42  Gordon, p. 144. 43   David M.  Jacobson, ‘Charles Warren: An Appraisal of his Contribution to the Archaeology of Jerusalem’, Strata: Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, 27 (2009), 31–61 (p. 35). 44  Jacobson, p. 37. 40 41

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the PEF, the Archbishop of York, that British Christians were inheritors of God’s promise to Abraham and inextricably linked to Palestine as their Holy Land ‘from which comes news of our redemption’.45 It was agreed that the first project of the PEF should be the preparation of a complete detailed survey map of Palestine. There was great interest in the topography of Jerusalem and questions raised seeking confirmation of the historicity and location of various sites mentioned in the Bible. This concern was noted by Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt as they all sought to depict significant holy places in Jerusalem. The most contentious attribution related to the exact placement of the Temple and the authenticity of the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Royal Engineers’ Great Survey of Palestine resulted in a map of considerable significance for further exploration of sacred sites and for military purposes. Importantly the strategic significance of the Survey in connection with the Suez Canal was well understood, although not overtly articulated as a factor.46 The combination of genuine religious interest and imperial ambition appealed to the British public and underpinned official support of the PEF.47 The Archbishop of York said, ‘“If you would really understand the Bible—which we circulate every year by the millions, you must understand also the country in which the Bible was first written”’ and further, a Great Survey of Palestine would provide ‘“the most definite and solid aid obtainable for the elucidation of the most prominent material features of the Bible”’.48 Charles Warren, also of the Royal Engineers, received the permission he had sought to investigate in Jerusalem but the Ottoman firman dated 1 May 1869 stated that he ‘should on no account be permitted to make excavations at the Haram al-Sharif, the Masjid al-Aqsa, the Kubbet al-­ Sakhra (Dome of the Rock) or any other places in the immediate vicinity of the Haram al-Sharif’.49 Showing that not everyone assumed an automatic right for the British to excavate wherever they chose, John ‘Rob Roy’ Macgregor, explorer, travel writer and exponent of ‘muscular Christianity’, wrote in The Times 5 April 1869, ‘Nor can we wonder that the Turk should refuse a stranger leave to dig quite close to his cherished 45  Neil Asher Silberman, Digging for God and Country—Exploration, Archaeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land 1799–1917 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), pp. 86, 87. 46  Silberman, p. 115. 47  Thomas W. Davis, p. 17. 48  Silberman, p. 115. 49  Jacobson, p. 59, footnote 5.

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sanctum. Even the Dean of Westminster (Stanley), so valuable a cooperator on the committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, would be reluctant to allow a Turkish officer of engineers to dig by the east buttresses of Westminster Abbey.’50 The details of Warren’s most exciting excavation were reported in the popular press and this stimulated broad public interest. The popular artist, William Simpson, brought the Jerusalem excavations ‘vividly to life in a series of dramatic drawings for the Illustrated London News’. In this enthusiastic climate the PEF opened a Palestine Museum at Dudley Gallery in June 1869 which was visited by over 6,000 people. Hunt would not have seen the exhibition then, as at the time he was in Italy, where he met up with Ruskin in Venice before leaving in August of that year for his second visit to the Holy Land. Subscriptions were sold to the new Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement and branches were formed throughout Britain.51 In 1869 an appeal for financial support was made to ‘the full body of the clergy of the Church of England; to the whole body of the non-conformist ministers; to students of the Bible of whatever opinions.’ The appeal stated, ‘any field of enquiry that expanded knowledge of ancient Palestine was welcomed; the focus was geographical, not biblical’.52 Interestingly no direct appeal was made to Roman Catholic or Jewish clergy. From the beginning it is evident that the PEF intended to follow innovative scientific archaeological methods and to be open to the use of the Bible as a historical text. Sayce’s approach to the use of Biblical text in archaeology was influenced by the way Heinrich Schliemann used Homer in his excavations at the site of Troy, which he conducted from 1870 to 1890. Schliemann was cited as the model for biblical archaeologists to follow. Like them, Schliemann used an ancient text as a source. Although many scholars at the time believed Homer’s Iliad to be fictitious, Schliemann insisted it was based on actual events and used it as a guide in his momentous excavation of the site he identified as ancient Troy. Schliemann showed that ‘archaeological investigation could actually supplement ancient texts and histories, as opposed to merely trying to validate or disprove them’.53 At the twenty-first annual meeting of the PEF in 1886 Charles Wilson said, ‘That some of the wealthy men of England  Jacobson, p. 38.  Silberman, p. 98. 52  Thomas W. Davis, p. 14. 53  Silberman, p. 147. 50 51

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would follow Dr Schliemann’s example’ and apply modern scientific archaeological method to a selected Biblical site.54 While for many Victorian Christians, archaeology was seen as the new science which had the potential to counter the challenges to their faith posed by the sciences of geology and biology, for archaeologists such as Flinders Petrie and the American, F. J. Bliss, excavations in the Near East had a much broader goal. They sought to contextualise the history of Palestine in the broader historical environment and chronology of the ancient Near Eastern states. When Flinders Petrie was engaged by the PEF in 1890 he found that ‘The primary chronological guide was still the Bible itself, and no systematic attempt had ever been made to correlate Palestinian finds with other ancient sites in the Middle East’.55 Flinders Petrie began ‘to fit Palestinian antiquities into the cultural context of the entire ancient Middle East’56 and his development of pottery typology in Egypt transformed archaeological practice and understanding. When Bliss took over the excavation at Tell el-Hesi in 1891, he found an inscribed tablet which was ‘a clear indication of the Egyptian hegemony of Egypt over the city-­ states of Canaan’.57 ‘Bliss’s discovery caused an immediate sensation back in London. For the first time, a scientific excavation in Palestine had contributed to the enlargement of secular, not merely Biblical, history.’58

Typological Symbolism So ‘higher criticism’, geology and archaeology, all underpinned by the conceptual framework accepting the notion of development over time, could potentially support the typological interpretation of scripture which was fundamental to much of Hunt’s iconography and choice of subject matter. Landow defines typology as ‘a Christian form of scriptural interpretation that claims to discover divinely intended anticipations of Christ and His dispensation in the laws, events, and people of the Old Testament’. He argues it had a significant influence on art, literature and thinking during Hunt’s lifetime.59 Barringer notes the important point that ‘Typology  Silberman, p. 147.  Silberman, p. 147. 56  Silberman, p. 149. 57  Silberman, p. 151. 58  Silberman, p. 149. 59  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 3. 54 55

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is not the same as allegory … since the event depicted (or signifier) and the event alluded to (or signified) are both true and real’.60 Typological interpretations of scripture were popular in Victorian sermons. Thomas Hartwell Horne wrote a standard text for British Divinity students, An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures in which he explained, ‘A type, in its primary and literal meaning, simply denoted a rough draught (sic), or less accurate model, from which a more perfect image is made; but, in the sacred or theological sense of the term, a type may be defined to be a symbol of something future and distant, or an example prepared and evidently designed by God to prefigure that future thing. What is thus prefigured is called the antitype.’61 In his Memoir Hunt recalls a conversation held with Ruskin in Italy in 1869 in which the artist makes a comment supporting the contention that his thinking aligned with typological understandings and the unfolding revelation through scripture. ‘The evidence of the individuality of Christ and of His teaching is absolutely convincing to me, there is record in the early books of the Bible of the advancing teaching of the prophets, without which Christ’s evangel would have been impossible.’62

Hunt’s First Religious Painting In about 1847, the year before the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt read Ruskin’s Modern Painters, vols. I and II which encouraged him to begin his first religious painting, Christ and the Two Marys, and introduced him to the concept of typological symbolism.63 The painting is based on the resurrection account in Matthew chapter 28 in which Mary Magdalene and ‘the other Mary’ first experienced their risen Lord, then hastened to tell the other disciples, an event which Radford describes as ‘the beginning of Christianity … therefore an appropriately lofty subject with which to begin a mission of artistic reform’. The typological element of the composition is strong as Christ stretches his arms out to greet the two Marys but ‘his posture also evokes the

 Barringer, p. 140.  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 22–3. 62  Hunt, Vol. II, p. 266. 63  Judith Bronkhurst, William Holman Hunt: A catalogue raisonné: Volume I, paintings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 41. 60 61

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crucifixion and, in a further layer of meaning, offers benediction’.64 In his Memoir Hunt wrote about the painting in the context of a discussion regarding the traditions of religious symbolism in Christian art. He made it clear that he wanted to break from this tradition and create a symbolism which would speak to his contemporaries. Hunt’s explanation reinforces his emphasis on the authority of the Bible over ecclesiastical tradition, as he makes a clear distinction between the Gospels and received legends of the church. In the figure of the risen Lord … the painters put a flag in His hands to represent his victory over Death: their public had been taught that this adjunct was a part of the alphabet of their faith; they accepted it, as they received all the legends painted at the order of the Church. Many of these were poetic and affecting; but with the New Testament in our hands we have new suggestions to make. If I were to put a flag with a cross on it in Christ’s hand … unaffected people would regard the work as having no living interest for them. I have been trying for some treatment that might make them see this Christ with something of the surprise that the Maries themselves felt on meeting Him as One who has come out of the grave.65

The rainbow surrounding the risen Christ in Christ and the Two Marys recalls the divine promise of hope signalled by the rainbow after the Genesis flood. The bright, almost lurid colours of the painting suggest those in Hunt’s later painting The Scapegoat (Appendix Fig. A.10). The use of apparently unnatural colour evokes a sense of a metaphysical, not physical event. Theologically, though, the two events have very different significance. While both the scapegoat and Jesus are sacrificed for human sin, Christ’s sacrifice not only redeems humanity through atonement but leads to the promise of eternal life through His resurrection. The goat dies and remains dead, while Jesus lives. This is, for Christians, the difference between the old and new covenants. In Christ and the Two Marys Hunt sought to paint a credible Palestinian landscape which would have an emotional impact on viewers. In the background, spread horizontally across the whole composition, is the holy city of Jerusalem. Striving for authenticity, he studied palm trees in the Kew Gardens and was even given a palm branch by one of the Garden’s 64  Ron Radford, Island to Empire: 300 years of British Art 1550–1850 (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2005), p. 272. 65  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 85.

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curators. In this context it is important to note though that due to technical and conceptual challenges and his inability to complete the work for the 1848 RA exhibition, Hunt left the painting unfinished and did not resume work on it again until 1897.66 The foreground, mountains in the background and sky were mainly painted in the 1890s, with the landscape background taken from watercolours he had done in the Holy Land. In spite of Hunt’s claims to veracity the label on the back of the painting, probably from the early twentieth century, says the mountains in the background of the composition are the Mountains of Moab but these mountains are actually too far away to be seen from Jerusalem.67

Truth of Nature and Truth of Spirit Although English Protestants desired to experience the places where Jesus walked and the Pre-Raphaelite mandate was to paint nature authentically, Hunt’s paintings were actually carefully constructed and detailed symbols which embodied an impression of historical and contextual accuracy in their complex typological iconography. For Hunt, unlike Roberts and Wilkie, historical or topographical accuracy was insufficient unless it also reflected spiritual vision, ‘a sacred reading of nature’.68 In Hunt’s typological expression of biblical events there is both literal physical truth and metaphysical meaning. Physical truth is the medium through which metaphysical truth is expressed. Jacobi notes the influence of Ruskin on Hunt’s thinking, saying, ‘Hunt’s adoption of Ruskin’s system of natural “types” anchors the spiritual within the material; a natural or historical event manifests a sacred one.’69 For Roberts and Wilkie the physical landscape of the Holy Land was the context in which Judaeo-Christian revelation occurred historically: the place where Jesus and the prophets lived. Whilst this was also true for Hunt, the latter adopted a more complex theology of physical place. Like Ruskin, of whom Landow writes, ‘Ruskin’s theory of typical beauty … asserts that men instinctively enjoy certain visual qualities, such as proportion and balance, because they are the material embodiment of divine

 Radford, p. 272.  Radford, pp. 274, 276. 68  Jacobi, p. 49. 69  Jacobi, p. 44. 66 67

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qualities’,70 for Hunt the physical environment itself is a revelation of God, the ‘master artist’. All nature reveals God’s order. He writes, ‘When the artist looks at the beauty which crowns every fresh line of effort in nature, he recognises the Master Artist’s work’.71 For Hunt the Holy Land provided empirical evidence to spiritual truth. Jacobi suggests that for both Ruskin and Hunt ‘the artist is defined as a visionary, one who can distinguish this divinity, expressed as “beauty”, from that which is fake, “flaunting and meretricious”’.72 Jay, referring to Thomas Carlyle’s concept of ‘spiritual optics’, contends ‘symptomatic of the power of the optical in religion is the tendency of the visionary tradition to posit a higher sight of the seer, who is able to discern a truth denied to normal vision’.73 For Hunt the Holy Land embodies divinely arranged scenes which are reflected in his paintings.74 Ruskin’s conception of the traditional function of art, as he wrote in his 1851 publication Pre-Raphaelitism, is ‘“to impress upon the popular mind the reality of the objects of faith, and the truth of the histories of Scripture, by giving visible form to both”’. This interpretation also aligned with the views of Frith who recognised the rhetorical power photography had ‘to create seeming simulacra of the real that could effectively reproduce the sensation of reality itself’.75 While in Jerusalem for the first time in 1855, Hunt wrote, ‘No scene on earth could offer more for reflection. Many elements were wanting to satisfy the fullest sense of beauty, yet … throughout the region, with centres of mystic suggestion that enchanted the eye, while the mind was enthralled by the thought that this spot had been the standing-place from which in turn the leading nations of the world had been addressed as from heaven itself.’76 Nineteenth-century travel writing often evoked spiritual

 Landow, Victorian Types, p. 4.  Hunt, ‘Religion and Art’, p. 43. 72  Jacobi, p. 45. 73  Martin Jay, Downcast eyes: The denigration of vision in twentieth-century French thought (Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 12–13. 74  Jacobi, p. 49. 75  Douglas R. Nickel, Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine: A Victorian photographer abroad (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 98. 76  Hunt, Vol. II, p. 18. 70 71

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connotations in landscape.77 Hunt’s writing, particularly his diaries, reflects his understanding of the conventions of this genre.78

Hunt and Christianity Hunt’s writing definitely suggests he was open to new ways of thinking theologically, but there are diverse and often contradictory opinions about the nature of his personal faith and beliefs. He was brought up in the Church of England but as a young man he became interested in Nonconformist preaching.79 At the end of the twentieth century his granddaughter, Diana Holman Hunt, maintained that her grandfather was agnostic but passionately interested in the Middle East and the history of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. She said this influence came from his childhood where he was introduced to his father’s ‘copiously illustrated Bible’.80 Hunt’s biographer, Amor, notes that every Sunday in Hunt’s childhood home there was, what she calls, ‘ceremonial reading of a chapter from the Bible’, after which Hunt’s father brought out scrapbooks (his hobby) and taught his children about ‘kings and queens, of people, places and national and international events’.81 She goes on to say that by the late 1830s Hunt ‘had long since given up church-going, having decided that the preacher had nothing of value to impart to him’.82 This is supported by Hunt’s Memoir in which he talks about going every Sunday to church until he stopped attending the Anglican service and went to hear a Nonconformist preacher instead. Hunt quickly became disillusioned with the Nonconformist service. Initially he thought this man ‘wonderful’ but soon he decided he had ‘reached the bottom of the preacher’s mine of wisdom, and that I was listening only to a learned parrot’.83 However, in spite of dismissive later assertions and Hunt’s own statement about church attendance in his youth, Hunt’s writings and those of  Jacobi, p. 46.  Pointon, p. 23. 79  Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, ‘The Light of the World: Mission and Message’, in Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision, ed. by Katherine Lochnan and Carol Jacobi (Ontario: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2008), 113–132 (p. 114). 80  Diana Hunt in Anne Clark Amor, William Holman Hunt: The true Pre-Raphaelite (London: Constable & Co., 1989), p. 9. 81  Amor, p. 17. 82  Amor, p. 21. 83  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 25. 77 78

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several of his contemporaries suggest that he was actually a man profoundly engaged with spirituality and the Christian faith. In his Memoir Hunt recalls the beginning of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 and writes about the philosophical position of its members. He writes, ‘of spiritual powers we for the moment felt we knew nothing, and we saw no profit in in relying upon a vision, however beautiful it might be’.84 This quotation is frequently used to support an interpretation of atheism on Hunt’s part. Jacobi uses it as evidence to support his contention that Hunt was conflicted about matters of spirituality and personal faith, asserting that Hunt’s private writings reveal ‘a faith and self-image which are deeply doubted’.85 Curiously, references to the above quotation usually omit the crucial words ‘we for the moment felt’. In fact, just a few weeks after the statement was written, Hunt wrote that he was designing his ‘“Christian” picture, Rienzi, to honour the obedience to Christ’s command that His doctrine should be preached to all the world at the expense, if need be, of life itself. Our non-belief in the immortality of the soul, therefore, was not long retained.’86 In an unpublished letter in the Huntington Library Hunt wrote to Rossetti in 1855, ‘I believe in Christ’s kingdom’.87 In 1874 Ruskin wrote, ‘“among the men I know, or have known, he is the One (literal) Christian, of intellectual power”’.88 Contemporary art historians continue to have divergent opinions about Hunt’s personal faith and beliefs. Maas contends Hunt ‘regarded religion as a means to an end’ saying ‘Christianity was to him the sublime ethical formula that alone could redeem the world. He numbered amongst his friends representatives of most religions, as well as avowed agnostics, all of whose views he respected: but for dogma he had no use.’89 Maas declines to closely associate Hunt’s personal beliefs with any specific sectarian position; instead, he says that Hunt possessed ‘a more synthetic, universalist conception of religion, he was open to Judaism and Islam, humouring sceptics and unbelievers’.90

 Hunt, Vol. I, p. 159.  Jacobi, p. 42. 86  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 160. 87  Bronkhurst, p. 43. 88  Bronkhurst, p. 19. 89  Jeremy Maas, Holman Hunt and The Light of the World (London: Scolar Press, 1984), p. 16. 90  Maas, p. 115. 84 85

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There is an important distinction to be made between having a sense of spirituality and faith and adhering to the doctrines of religious institutions. Hunt’s writing and paintings provide strong evidence that he adopted the former position. I agree with the interpretation of Barringer, who contends Hunt’s ‘profound religious convictions permeate every aspect of his work’. He says Hunt was an atheist in his youth but experienced ‘a dramatic conversion’, after which he became a ‘deeply convinced Protestant’. In 1880 Hunt wrote to Ruskin about his state of belief in 1847, before his 1853 conversion experience. In this letter Hunt claimed that before reading Modern Painters he had been ‘a contemptuous unbeliever in any spiritual principles but the development of talent … something thus strangely gained was first arrested me in my downward course. It was the voice of God. I read this in rapture and it sowed some seed of shame.’91 Barringer says the converted Hunt was sympathetic to Broad Church ideas of Christ as ‘a real, living presence’ but that his strongest attraction seems to have been to Evangelicalism ‘with its emphasis on a literal reading of scripture’. In his Memoir Pre-Raphaelites and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Hunt links painting The Light of the World with his spiritual conversion.92 Many comments of Hunt attest to the thoughtfulness with which he considered and understood contemporary issues in the Church. Given his acceptance of critical textual analysis and new scientific theories, it seems problematic to support the view that Hunt was attracted to a literal interpretation of scripture. However, as Jacobi, argues, ‘Hunt makes it clear that he considers the Bible to be an authentic historical text, a viable piece of evidence’.93 At this point we must note the distinction between understanding text as being literally true, as containing spiritual truths and as reflecting an actual historical and socio-cultural context. Further evidence that context is important in understanding Hunt’s flexible views is in his Memoir, when he writes that, on visiting Oxford in 1852, changes made to church furnishings and liturgy by the High Church party there were ‘altogether to my taste’; yet he was concerned about the possibility of ‘impending priestcraft’. He was also bothered by the criticism of the Martyr’s Memorial being erected to honour the Protestants Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer. He wrote of this, ‘I could not then believe

 Jacobi, p. 44.  Barringer, p. 128. 93  Jacobi, p. 44. 91 92

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any Englishman would so far forget their national character as to desire in sober mind to suppress liberty of conscience’.94 Much of Hunt’s writing and his actions suggest that he was greatly interested in issues of religion and belief but that his views were not static throughout his life and they ultimately defied conventional sectarian labels. He was also very much aware of the ways in which his contemporaries tried to categorise and judge him. Wood declares that ‘Hunt was an intensely serious and religious person, unlike Rossetti or Millais, and his art represents the serious, moralistic side of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He believed that art had a purpose, and that it must be a “handmaid in the cause of justice and truth”.’95 Hunt was also aware of the ways in which the goals of church and imperial politics often intersected in the Holy Land, for example, in the previously discussed establishment of an Anglo-­ German Protestant bishopric in Jerusalem. In 1858 Hunt wrote a pamphlet accusing the controversial Bishop Gobat, head of that Church mission in Jerusalem, of corruption and this alienated Hunt from the Anglican establishment there.96 I have mentioned several times in relation to other artists and travellers that good relationships with British officials made travel and access to subject matter considerably easier; yet Hunt chose to risk this in order to act according to his conscience.

Theological Debates in the Church of England Varied and often diametrically opposed interpretations have been made about the religious nature of Hunt’s painting. To make sense of this it is necessary to contextualise Hunt’s painting, writing and life in relation to the shifts in British religious thinking from the 1830s to the 1870s. Parsons argues that in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s, Evangelicals and Tractarians shared many beliefs particularly about the divine inspiration of scripture, miracles, the truth of prophecy and God’s judgement of humanity. But it was not until the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s when Biblical and moral criticism challenged orthodox belief that these issues became truly contentious and the Broad Church voice was also heard. The issues which divided the Church in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s focused on the  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 324.  Christopher Wood, 1999), p. 108. 96  Bronkhurst, p. 44. 94 95

Victorian Painting

(London:

Weidenfeld

and

Nicolson,

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relationship of scripture and tradition, the authority of clergy and the nature of the sacraments and these were matters about which Evangelical and Tractarian thinking definitely diverged. Their clearly separate identities were established by the time.97 As textual criticism developed and questions of authority and the relationship of scripture to church tradition began to polarise Protestant thinking, there was a consequent imperative to understand the Holy Land. It was in this quest that Hunt made his four trips to the region. In February 1860 Essays and Reviews was published. This significant work was a catalyst for debate, division and change and ‘initiated what was arguably the greatest theological and religious controversy of the Victorian era’.98 The publication was hugely controversial because it advocated interpreting the Bible from the perspectives of literary criticism, external historical sources and scientific discoveries. It also focussed on the primacy of moral living over adherence to doctrine.99 Seven authors, six ordained and one lay, wrote about such contentious contemporary issues as the authority of scripture in the light of historical and literary criticism and scientific discoveries and theories about the age of the earth and the evolution of species, including human beings. They implicitly and explicitly raised the issue of conscience, wondering at what point a clergyman might be unable to remain within the Church if his views diverged significantly from established doctrine and practice. However one of the most significant and profound issues they explored was the morality of the God of a literally interpreted Bible. Over five years Essays and Reviews went into thirteen editions and over four hundred books, pamphlets and articles were written in response. Hunt was a conceptual, spiritual thinker whose faith and beliefs cannot be easily categorised as consistently aligning with any one faction within the Church of England or any other Protestant denomination. The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, The Shadow of Death and The Light of the World together encapsulate Hunt’s Christology and his use of the complex methodology of biblical typology. They show, respectively, the young Jesus’s first awareness of his divine mission, Jesus the hard-working man and the spiritual Christ whose message is for all the world. Critical 97  Parsons in Gerald Parsons, ed., Religion in Victorian Britain. Volume I: Traditions, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 34. 98  Parsons, Vol. I, p. 40. 99  Parsons, Vol. I, p. 41

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engagement with the Bible, the application of reason, personal experience and issues of morality and conscience were the crucial underpinnings of Hunt’s painting and writing as he endeavoured to communicate his personal understanding of religious truths.

CHAPTER 8

William Holman Hunt: Faith Experience and New Images

Conscience and Light In the decade leading up to the publication of Essays and Reviews, Hunt undertook a visual exploration of conscience, morality and free will, fundamental issues in the essays. He intended The Awakening Conscience (Appendix Fig. A.13) painted in 1853–54 and The Light of the World in 1851–53 (Appendix Fig. A.1) to be companion paintings, both conveying the message of answering the call of Christ in a way which brings about inner transformation for the believer. In his Memoir Hunt wrote, ‘The pathetic verse in Proverbs, “As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, so is he that sings songs to a heavy heart”, had led me to this subject when thinking of a material interpretation of the idea in The Light of the World. My desire was to show how the still small voice speaks to a human soul in the turmoil of life.’1 While The Light of the World shows the incarnate Christ, The Awakening Conscience, is a contemporary scene, however, both paintings are about the power of Christ in transforming the individual’s life.2 Hunt reveals his deep theological understanding in both works, as in each painting

1  William Holman Hunt Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Vol. I (London: Macmillan and Co., 1905), p. 347. 2  Michaela Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible—Representation and Belief in Mid-Victorian Britain, (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), pp. 184–5.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. M. Burritt, Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41261-6_8

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salvation can only happen if the individual responds to Christ’s invitation and ‘invites him in’. As we have seen the various written ‘Lives of Jesus’ which spoke of a loving, forgiving, moral and accessible divinity offered great support to many Christians at a time of intellectual challenges to their beliefs. Many Victorian hymns offered the same assurance of a personal relationship with God. Hymns such as the Revd. H. F. Lyte’s Abide With Me (1847) and Canon Henry Twells’ At Even, When the Sun Was Set (1868) provided such reassurance but the sentiment of these hymns was not new, being part of an English tradition exemplified by clergyman poets such as the Tractarian, Keble, who wrote the hymn Sun of my Soul, Thou Saviour Dear in 1820. The Light of the World, the first two versions of which were painted in 1851–53 and 1853–57, aligns with this desire to experience an encounter with Jesus. Maas suggests Hunt might have been influenced by the late eighteenth-century hymn, Behold I stand at the door and knock, reissued in an 1806 collection of hymns by the late Revd. Joseph Grigg. It includes the words: Behold a stranger’s at the door! He gently knocks, has knock’d before …. Admit him, for the human breast, Ne’er entertained so kind a guest: Admit him, and you’ll not expel, Where’er he comes, he comes to dwell.3

Hunt’s The Light of the World had an immediate influence on popular religious culture. Several hymns were published soon after the painting was exhibited, such as Bonar’s ‘Light of the World, for ever, ever shining’ (1864), Cross’s ‘Light of the World, O shine on us’ (1865), Monsell’s ‘Light of the World, we hail thee’ (1863) and Bateman’s ‘Light of the World, Whose kind and gentle care’ (1874). The imagery of Hunt’s painting also inspired American hymn writers including the influential author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote the hymn, ‘Knocking, knocking, ever knocking’ which was published in 1867 accompanied by an engraving of Hunt’s picture.4 3  Jeremy Maas, Holman Hunt and The Light of the World (London: Scolar Press, 1984), p. 30. 4  Maas, p. 78.

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Hunt’s View of Arabs and Jews While Hunt’s writing frequently speaks of his Christian faith and his sense of Englishness, there are conflicting opinions about the extent to which Hunt’s attitude to Jews and Arabs he met exhibited negative behaviours of British Victorian colonial imperialism. Hunt was a pioneering supporter of early Zionism and he did not accept one-dimensional anti-Semitic sentiments.5 The lantern held by Christ in the third version of The Light of the World c.1900–04 (Appendix Fig. A.11) has Star of David shapes on it.6 Hunt explained ‘the diversity of designs of the openings of the lantern’ were ‘essential to the spiritual interpretation of the subject’.7 Hunt also added a crescent moon symbol to Christ’s lantern in the final version of the painting. Apparently this inclusion was in response to concern expressed by a Muslim that Islam had been excluded from the ‘world’ in previous iterations of the painting.8 This is an interesting anecdote but it must be noted that the moon is sometimes seen in traditional Christian iconography as a representation of the Old Testament, signifying light, but not the full illumination of the sun, brought by Christ. Maas suggests the inclusion of the star and crescent represented a ‘divine message for all the world’ but he also suggests a less virtuous motive on Hunt’s part. The Times critic of 4 March 1906 surmised the inclusion was to ‘rebuke’ the authorities at Keble College who, it was thought, had found the original painting too liberal in its meaning.9 Unlike Roberts and Wilkie, Hunt took a very active interest in the politics of the Near East and of the situation of European and Near Eastern Jews. The social context in which Hunt lived created an awareness of issues relating to Jewish rights and heritage and, indeed, to the Jewishness of Jesus. In the context of debates about the civil and political rights of Jews in Britain, in 1833 William Howley, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said Jews ‘shone forth in ancient times, like a light in the firmament, 5  Tim Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) p. 136. 6  Albert Boime, Albert, ‘William Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat: Rite of Forgiveness/ Transference of Blame’, Art Bulletin, vol. LXXXIV no. 1 (2002), 94–114 (p. 99). 7  Bronkhurst in Boime, p. 100. 8  Bronkhurst in Nicholas Tromans, ‘Palestine: Picture of Prophecy’, in Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision, ed. by Katharine Lochnan and Carol Jacobi (Ontario: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2008), 135–158 (p. 159). 9  Maas, pp. 111–112.

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proclaiming the attributes of the Creator, and the hope of a redeemer to a benighted world’.10 In 1882 Hunt wrote to Gladstone on the Eastern Question, saying he would like to see the Turks expelled from Syria and Egypt and in 1896 he wrote a letter published in the Jewish Chronicle 21 February, recommending the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. On 16 and 26 August and 6 September 1905, Hunt had letters on the resettlement of Russian and Jewish refugees published in The Times in connection with passing of the Aliens Bill.11 In comments clearly sympathetic to the situation of Jews and indeed Muslims and other current refugees, Hunt wrote about The Aliens Bill and the question of a Jewish homeland. In the letter of 26 August 1905, he argues, ‘Is it reasonable to insist that, while steps are deferred for settling the new nation in Palestine (a project to which with all my heart I wish success), the “Jewish colony” in East Africa should not be helped to a prosperous issue?’ and later, ‘I must, however, ask both correspondents if we are to assume all the refugees to be members of the Hebrew race, or, if they are not so, whether other fugitives, Russians, Armenians, Poles, Finns, Moslems, or the like who are in the same miserable plight as the Jewish wanderers, would be received within their gates?’12 Further, it is unlikely that Hunt was generally hostile to Islamic belief because, significantly, he chose to begin the second volume of his Memoir with a quotation from the Qur’an: ‘But whosoever choseth the life to come and directeth his endeavour towards the same being also a true believer, the endeavour of these shall be acceptable unto God’.13 Considering a range of his writing it would seem that Hunt became more liberal later in life, given earlier negative comments about Arabs and Turks he made during his travels in the Near East. It is also evident that he, like Roberts and Wilkie before him, differentiated between the different groups he encountered. For them the people of the region were not just a uniform ‘Other’.

 Egan in Boime, p. 100.  Judith Bronkhurst, William Holman Hunt: A catalogue raisonné: Volume I, paintings, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 48–51. 12  William Holman Hunt, Letter to the Editor, ‘The Aliens Bill’, The Times, 26 August 1905, p. 5. 13  William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Vol. II (London: Macmillan and Co., 1905), p. 1. 10 11

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Hunt in Jerusalem When the first reviews of The Light of the World were coming out from its exhibition at the Royal Academy, Hunt was in Jerusalem working on designs for his painting of the young Jesus in The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (Appendix Fig. A.3).14 The work was commenced in 1854 and was completed in 1860, after his second trip. Critics in the Art-Journal and the Athenaeum were highly critical of The Light of the World but hugely successful print publisher and art dealer Ernest Gambart expressed a desire to engrave it and Ruskin wrote a long defence of the painting to The Times, 4 May 1854. It was while receiving such divergent feedback that Hunt was focussing on his representation of Luke 2:46, in which Mary and Joseph find the boy Jesus disputing with the learned teachers in the Temple. In The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple Hunt referred to new archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem but his interior design was largely influenced by Owen Jones’s replica of the Alhambra at Granada, which Hunt saw at the Crystal Palace in London in 1856. Barringer claims, ‘To elide Moorish architecture in Spain with a Jewish building of more than a millennium earlier dramatically contravened archaeological accuracy, but conformed to Orientalist ideas of “the East” as unchanging and undifferentiated’.15 Maas cites the caricaturist Leslie Ward’s 1915 publication in which he writes that Stephens assisted Hunt ‘“in painting the detail in some of his pictures such as the Moorish temple in The Saviour in the Temple”’.16 Landow, however, observes the painting incorporates ‘elaborate archaeological reconstructions of dress, custom, architecture, facial type’.17 There is little evidence to support the interpretation that Hunt saw the East as unchanging or its architecture as interchangeable over time and culture, especially given his interest in contemporary archaeological discoveries. Hunt’s use of the Alhambra reflects his desire to create an evocative and visually rich atmosphere. As the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed in 70 AD Hunt had to create an imaginative reconstruction but

 Maas, pp. 60–61.  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, pp. 135–36. 16  Maas, p. 49. 17  George P.  Landow, Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows (Boston, Mass: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 125. 14 15

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he is unlikely to have thought its interior would actually have been the same as that of a Moorish building in Spain. We know that Hunt read the scriptures and other sources carefully in preparation for his paintings. Whatever decisions Hunt made for aesthetic reasons, they were not made in ignorance of cultural, theological or historical differences. In his Memoir he writes of being in Jerusalem preparing to paint The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple. ‘I was continually checked by my ignorance of Jewish ordinances, and I had to turn to Exodus, Leviticus, and the accounts of the building of the Temple; this led on to the Talmud, Josephus, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and other books of the New Testament; the more I read the greater appeared the responsibility of my undertaking, and the more I felt disposed to reject tradition, religious as well as artistic, not convincingly true.’ He then writes, ‘it was essential that I should make myself familiar with the ceremonies prevailing in the Temple at the time of Christ’.18 In 1860, without Hunt’s permission, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple was removed from exhibition and taken to Buckingham Palace for a viewing by Queen Victoria.19 Frederic George Stephens20 was commissioned by the dealer Gambart to write a pamphlet, William Holman Hunt and his Works; a Memoir of the Artist’s Life with Descriptions of his Pictures (1860). In Stephens’s description of Hunt’s 1854 activities in Egypt, the artist can be seen to be undertaking an ethnographic study. However, looking at the broader context of Hunt’s methodology, he is primarily gathering empirical evidence for his biblical paintings. Stephens wrote that Hunt ‘remained in Egypt several months familiarising himself with the Oriental character, studying Eastern life as it was to be found round about him, and visiting many historically famous localities … he made studies of the people, at one time in the cities, and at another in the desert. This afforded leisure … if we may so phrase it, to Orientalize himself.’21 Later Stephens wrote that the ‘actors’ in Hunt’s The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple are ‘“costumed in various and brilliant fabrics of Oriental character”’.22 Hunt did adopt a critical and patronising tone in several of his references to Arabs and Jews he met in Palestine.23 While travelling on the Nile,  Hunt, Vol. I, pp. 406–7.  Bronkhurst, p. 44. 20  Stephens was art critic of the Athenaeum for 41 years. 21  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 143. 22  Maas, p. 8. 23  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 132. 18 19

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Hunt insisted on separation from ‘native passengers’24 and later he wrote of being amongst ‘dirty Arabs’.25 Curiously, while Hunt’s published writings certainly convey a sense of imperial authority and superiority, his diary has a different tone and shows his vulnerability and sensitivity.26 In The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple Hunt does not condemn the Jews as a people or the practice of Judaism but rather what he perceives to be the ‘conservatism of those who rely on traditions of religious observance rather than, like Hunt himself, reaching a personal understanding of religion through conversion’. For example he criticises the old rabbi ‘wedded to the letter rather than the spirit of the law, who clutches the scrolls’.27 During and after his second trip to the Holy Land, Hunt’s interest in Jewish life further developed and this was to inform his subsequent biblical paintings.28 There are several aspects of The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple which can be interpreted as supporting an Evangelical intention on Hunt’s part. As Landow points out, Mary is placed with those in the Temple who do not understand the message or significance of Jesus. The painting depicts the moment when Christ realises who He is. Understood this way the painting shows the fulfilment of type and prophecy, an image of God’s appearance in history and a reinforcement of the importance of preaching as Jesus interprets the Law in the Temple.29 The painting is essentially typological, bridging ‘pictorial realism and complex iconography’ as ‘temporal and eternal coincide’30 in the revelation of the young Jesus. Reinforcing a typological interpretation are the Hebrew and Latin versions of Malachi 3.1, ‘and the Lord whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to this temple’, recorded in the disc behind the Holy Family.31

Hunt’s Work Displayed to the Public Demonstrating the popular success and influence of Hunt’s religious works in shaping British visual and devotional culture, the art dealer Gambart paid Hunt £5,500 for The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple  Hunt, Vol. I, pp. 395–96.  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 397. 26  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 134. 27  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 136. 28  Christopher Wood, Victorian Painting (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), p. 109. 29  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 125. 30  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 126. 31  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 130. 24 25

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and the ‘vast sum’ of £10,500 for The Shadow of Death (Appendix Fig. A.4). These were commercially sound outlays as ticket sales from exhibitions and the sales of engravings were lucrative. Very large numbers of prints of both paintings were produced and they were distributed internationally, as were those of The Light of the World. As Barringer observes, these prints were, ‘Displayed in schoolrooms and nurseries, church halls and parlours, Holman Hunt’s were the most powerful religious images of the Victorian era’.32 The illustrated Bibles, previously mentioned, which were extremely popular at the time, had a similar didactic power to Hunt’s engravings.33 As I noted when commenting on the value of engravings after Hunt’s works The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple and The Light of the World, Stephens wrote, ‘Indeed a national service is rendered by the publication of really noble transcripts from noble pictures like these. Where the pictures cannot go, the engravings penetrate. Their appeal is infinitely extended … and all the good which such thoughtful and purposeful art can effect … is multiplied a thousand-fold.’34 Importantly though, whilst Hunt’s religious paintings had devotional power, they were actually far from being accurate ethnographic studies of the contemporary Holy Land or accurate reconstructions of the biblical past. The figure of the young Christ in The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple was modelled on Cyril Flower, an English Gentile schoolboy from prestigious Eton and Stephens commented on the ‘fine Englishness of his (Hunt’s) idea of the splendid body of our Lord’, a ‘robust youth’.35 For Barringer, Hunt’s choice of model here ‘represents a further digression from the original project of aiming at absolute historical and ethnographic truth, and reveals the ideological nature of Hunt’s work’.36 Likewise some of the faces in the picture were modelled on Jewish men in Jerusalem but the prohibition on working for Gentiles at the time made this difficult so Hunt recruited models from the London Jewish community on his return in 1856.37 The Athenaeum critic described the painting as, ‘imperfect as a work of ethnology and archaeology, but it provided a convincing effect of veracity’. The scene was historically Jewish and located in Palestine, but its  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 145.  Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible, p. 171. 34  Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible, p. 171, footnote 198. 35  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 138. 36  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 138. 37  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 136. 32 33

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method of representation and explanation was as the Athenaeum asserted, ‘thoroughly English and Protestant’.38 During his first trip to the Holy Land in 1854 Hunt began his confronting symbol of expiation, The Scapegoat (Appendix Fig. A.10) which he completed in 1856 after his return to England. This painting, too, can be interpreted as aligning with Evangelical theology and Christology. For Evangelical Christians the sacrificial atonement of Christ was paramount. In his analysis, Landow draws attention to the ‘extraordinarily popular’ Bible commentary of Thomas Scott, which says the burnt offerings in Leviticus 1.3 ‘“especially typified Christ”’. Landow contends The Scapegoat is informed by ‘precisely such an Evangelical conception of the Levitical types’ and that the painting ‘stands as a powerful meditative image of suffering innocence’.39

Hunt’s Portrayal of Sacrificial Suffering Hunt’s depiction of the goat in Leviticus 16 (Lev 16.10–22 and Isaiah 53), driven into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement, was painted on the shores of the Dead Sea, where Hunt apparently sat with a goat, which sadly died of the ordeal, his painting equipment and a loaded rifle. In November 1854, in an informal, unpublished journal now in John Rylands Library, in Manchester, Hunt talks about the Old Testament associations of the place and the feeling of being in God’s presence. He describes the surroundings as having been ‘arranged’ by God to contain a moral message, ‘if in all there are sensible figures of men’s secret deeds and thoughts then this is the horrible figure of sin’.40 Hunt’s description of the landscape recalls ‘the lake that burns with sulphurous flames’ (Revelation 21.8) and he concludes, ‘No one can stand and say it is not accursed by God’.41 This statement characterises the power of biblical place to underpin the spiritual message in the Protestant sensibility. Hunt’s description of the same place in his Memoir42 records what Jacobi refers to as ‘unusually brief and prosaic’ geological observations and reinforces a topographical approach by referring to A Diary of a  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 139.  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 27. 40  Carol Jacobi, William Holman Hunt, Painter, Painting, Paint (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 50–51. 41  Jacobi, p. 51. 42  Hunt, Vol. I, pp. 456–59. 38 39

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Journey to the East, in the Autumn of 1854 (1856) published by his travelling companion, William Beaumont.43 There are, however, passages here which are far from prosaic. Hunt writes, for example, ‘We had before our eyes the region, the very name of which has become a proverb of God’s judgement; and as we surveyed the range of view, the celestial image of Heaven’s mercy in the shape of a magnificent rainbow … spanned the whole plain’.44 This quotation does, however, support Jacobi’s point that ‘the landscape is made meaningful by means of cultural associations’.45 As he does with The Shadow of Death, Hunt provides clues to the interpretation of The Scapegoat by the symbolism on the frame, which Barringer analyses thus the frame bears two biblical inscriptions (Lev 16.10–22 and Isaiah 53) drawing attention to the parallel between the sacrifice of the goat and the passion of Christ. On the right side of the frame, a cross made up of circles supports a heartsease, a flower emblematic of the redemptive qualities of Christ, while at the left the dove holding an olive branch recalls God’s promise to Noah. The obscure seven-star motif at the top of the frame represents the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, while the seven-branched menorah on the lower edge symbolises God’s mercy to the Jews.46

As with many of Hunt’s works there are a range of possible interpretations of the The Scapegoat and the reactions of Hunt’s contemporaries and later scholars to the painting are often critical. The image of a dying goat in a landscape of apocalyptic colours was too confronting for many of Hunt’s contemporaries. Apart from the visual dissonance, the biblical and Talmudic allusions were complex and their theological intricacies and intended typological element unknown or unclear to all but the most theologically literate. The following critiques all argue that Hunt was unsuccessful in convincing his viewers of a typological relationship between the scapegoat and the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Landow argues, ‘This grisly indication of the scapegoat’s death … does not function as a typological image’.47 Barringer writes, ‘A goat. … Involved in an obscure and relatively barbaric  Jacobi, pp. 51–52.  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 456. 45  Jacobi, p. 52. 46  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 140. 47  Landow, Victorian types, p. 141. 43 44

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ancient Jewish ritual is an extraordinary symbol through which to portray the passion of Christ. … The critics found the difference between signifier (ritual goat) and signified (Christ’s passion) too great.’48 When the picture was displayed, a critic in the Athenaeum wrote ‘here is a dying goat which as a mere goat has no more interest for us than the sheep that furnished yesterday’s dinner; but it is a type of the Saviour, says Mr Hunt and quotes the Talmud. Here we join issue, for it is impossible to paint a goat though its eyes were upturned with human passion, that could explain any allegory or hidden type.’49 Maas writes, ‘To the public it was merely a goat staggering about in the wilderness for no apparent reason’. The symbolism ‘was completely lost on all who saw it’. ‘It never occurred to Hunt that the vast generality of mankind were not avid readers of Isaiah, Leviticus and the Talmud.’50 In his account of painting The Scapegoat in Pre-Raphaelitism and The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Hunt depicts himself as the masculine Englishman braving the wilderness in ‘a tradition of imperial exploration literature’.51 This image is reinforced by his photographic reconstruction of the event in his backyard in England in 1893. Ryan suggests photographs, ‘reveal as much about the imaginative landscapes of imperial culture as they do about the physical spaces or people pictured within their frame. In this respect they are themselves expressions of the knowledge and power that shaped the reality of Empire.’52 In an interesting parallel with interpretations of the creation and reception of Hunt’s self-image, the works of British travel photographers such as Frith, argues Ryan, ‘may be seen as part of a discourse on imperial geographical exploration. Their photographic expeditions were animated by a sense of discovering the unknown and they prided themselves on the arduous conditions they endured to secure their photographs; indeed, to many viewers this enhanced the novelty, scientific worth and artistry of the images.’53 In the context of the publication of David Livingstone’s Missionary Travels (1857) and similar accounts of perilous evangelical journeys, it has been argued that Hunt presented his own activities as  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 143.  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 144. 50  Maas, pp. 83–84. 51  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 142. 52  James R Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the visualization of the British Empire (Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 19–20. 53  Ryan, p. 45. 48 49

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f­undamentally religious toil.54 I will shortly develop this understanding of Christian work in the context of analysing specific paintings. Hunt described his endeavours in the Holy Land as rigorous and dangerous. It seems clear that some of his contemporaries accepted this self-­ proclaimed rhetoric. The photographic reconstruction of Hunt painting by the Dead Sea was published in the Christmas supplement of the Art Journal of 1893 to accompany Mrs Meynell’s account of Hunt’s endeavours.55 Reflecting on The Scapegoat in Archdeacon Farrar and Mrs Meynell’s account William Holman Hunt His Life and Work in the Art Annual of 1893 Mrs Meynell wrote: Assuredly Mr. Hunt would never have faced, as he did, so many perils—perils of death by malaria, perils of wild beasts, perils of wandering robbers, perils of venomous insects, perils of murder and semi-starvation, to paint a miserable dying goat upon a desolate shore, if he had not desired to fill the minds of those who gazed upon his picture with some, at least, of the deep thoughts—thoughts the deepest which may occupy the mind of man— which sustained his high resolution in painting it.56

Hunt’s paintings were known to diverse audiences. Their meanings can be ambiguous, as their interpretation can depend on the prior knowledge, beliefs and experience of the viewer and the socio-cultural context in which the works were created and viewed, both originally and subsequently.57 It is, of course, not unusual for multiple interpretations to be ascribed to the same image or text and more than one interpretation might be ‘right’.58 In a very different tone from his robust masculine discussion of the experience of painting The Scapegoat by the Dead Sea, Hunt writes sensitively and emotionally in his Journal of first seeing Nazareth. Such differences in writing again remind us of the danger of generalisations about Hunt’s character and behaviour.

 Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 143.  Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible, p. 163. 56  Frederic William Farrar and Alice Meynell, William Holman Hunt: His Life and Work (London: The Art Journal Office, 1893), p. 12. 57  Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: the use of images as historical evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 178. 58  Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 181. 54 55

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Sweet Nazareth of Galilee, never did I imagine thee so lovely in all the many times that I have tried to picture the abode of our Lord. The sight of it this night crowds into my mind a thousand remembrances from the days of my schooltime when I first read the history of the Master who lived here humbly and in sorrow, with these bitter days when I lost my blind childish trust till the time when God again brought me in sorrow (in sorrow is crossed out in text) to kneel before him and with this all my friends who live in the hope he brought us.59

In his Journal in May 1855 Hunt writes of the ‘loveliness of fertile country around Nazareth’ and later, of the Sea of Galilee ‘like a precious sapphire, a precious gift, an espousal gem to confirm a bride of some more righteous age’. This last imagery recalls Revelation 21.2, ‘And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband’.60

Symbolism and Hunt’s Conceptual Complexities Hunt’s writing and painting reveal a much more complex intellectual engagement with theological concepts than is evident in the work of Roberts and Wilkie. Many of Hunt’s works embody a reflective moral position and much of his writing suggests he saw his rigorous, and sometimes dangerous, efforts to paint in the Holy Land and the years he sometimes spent completing paintings, as an embodiment of the Protestant work ethic promulgated by Carlyle. Work became a religious act, as suggested in his depiction of the hard-working carpenter Christ in The Shadow of Death (Appendix Fig. A.4), the Saviour as a working man.61 The idea of a Christ who could identify with their labours made The Shadow of Death very popular with working British men. Affirmation of the Protestant work ethic is also reflected in other Pre-Raphaelite paintings such as Ford Madox Brown’s Work (1852–65), in which Carlyle is depicted. Hunt’s painting The Shadow of Death is itself an act of religious labour as is its subject matter. Regarding the concept of religious labour it is helpful to consider what Mrs Meynell wrote in 1893 of Hunt’s endeavours and their resonance with the British working man. Meynell wrote,

 Jacobi, p. 58.  Jacobi, pp. 56–58. 61  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 145. 59 60

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His pictures were the work of years crowded with intense activity. He spent his life and strength over The Shadow of Death. Painting Christ over-wearied with labour, he did not spare himself. Working men in the North of England, who went in numbers to see the picture and to subscribe for reproductions for their own walls, were no doubt sensible of this.62

Hunt believed in an inextricable link between his actions and the theology informing his painting. While this emphasis aligns with Evangelical Protestantism it also resonates with the Broad Church emphasis on active ministry to address social needs.63 Meynell also wrote of part of the popularity of The Shadow of Death amongst working men was because ‘the Lord of Glory was presented to them as a friend who had “lived in huts where poor men lie”. They saw in the painting the ennoblement of honest labour.’64 The Shadow of Death was painted between 1870 and 1873. It is one of the strongest expressions of typology in Hunt’s work, resonant with multiple symbols. The title, of course, also reinforces the typological significance.65 Yet Hunt insisted it was ‘strictly … historic with not a single fact of any kind in it of a supernatural nature’.66 The painting was seen as offensive by some Roman and Anglo-Catholics, as it depicted the back, rather than the face, of the Virgin. The scene is strongly typological as it depicts the Saviour with arms outstretched, creating a shadow which prefigures the crucifixion in creating this type within the life of Jesus. In this painting Hunt was able to creatively re-imagine a scene from Jesus’s life while providing his Victorian audience with a powerful and confronting new way to see the crucifixion.67 Whilst The Scapegoat, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple and The Shadow of Death are set in the Holy Land, and reflect Hunt’s vision of the historical context of these biblical events, The Light of the World situates Christ in Hunt’s England, or perhaps in a place which transcends physical geography. In The Light of the World Hunt is not attempting to paint a biblical narrative but to convey spiritual meaning. It is a symbolic representation of two New Testament texts, Rev 3.20, ‘Behold I stand at the  Farrar and Meynell, p. 4.  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 122. 64  Farrar and Meynell, p. 19. 65  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 130. 66  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 144. 67  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 49. 62 63

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door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come to him, and will sup with him, and he with me’, and John 8.12 ‘I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life’. The painting shows a lavishly robed, bearded figure carrying a lantern, the light of which illuminates part of his figure. He wears the crown of thorns but the moon behind also forms a halo of light around his head. Christ stands outside an overgrown door, the door of a human soul, a door which has remained closed for a long time but which may now open in response to the light of forgiveness and salvation. As stated earlier, Hunt claimed that the painting was a personal response to a faith experience of the Risen Christ. Pointon argues that ‘The interpellation of self, the foregrounding of subjectivity, was … crucial to the project of Protestant religious art’.68 Landow also emphasises that ‘this work derives from a very personal, not easily repeated experience of conversion’.69 In his Memoir Hunt wrote that he started with the conviction that; ‘much of the teaching of Christ’s life is lost by history being overlaid with sacerdotal gloss’, claiming, ‘I have established my claim as a pioneer for English art in study of historic truth’.70 There is sufficient evidence to argue that The Light of the World, with its Anglo-Saxon Saviour, shaped the subsequent visual image of Jesus in the imperial British consciousness. In 1902, in Five Great Painters of the Victorian Era, Sir Wyke Bayliss, President of the Royal Society of British Artists, described Hunt as ‘the painter of the Christ’.71 In his 1890 publication, Rex Regum: A Painter’s Study of the Likenesses of Christ from the Apostles to the Present Day, Bayliss wrote: I have reserved for my last illustration of the Likeness of Christ one that is perhaps the best known and most loved of them all. I suppose that there is scarcely a home in England which does not possess it in some form, as an etching, or an engraving. … ‘The Light of the World’ is not to be passed over simply as a popular picture. It is much more than that. It is popular as 68  Marcia Pointon, ‘The artist as ethnographer: Holman Hunt and the Holy Land’, in PreRaphaelites Re-viewed, ed. by Marcia Pointon (Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press, 1989), 22–44 (p. 33). 69  George P.  Landow, William Holman Hunt and Typological Symbolism (London: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 36. 70  Hunt, Vol. II, p. 409. 71  Giebelhausen, Painting the Bible, pp. 127, 217.

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a divine melody from Handel’s ‘Messiah’ is popular—or a great hymn of the Church which expresses in a higher form of language than that of common life the passion of religious enthusiasm.72

The Light of the World became the most famous visual symbol of Victorian faith. Hunt’s image of Christ has been reproduced in churches throughout the world and disseminated in a multitude of prints. When The Light of the World (Appendix Fig. A.11) was presented to St Paul’s in 1908 Barringer claims it attained a place ‘as an official icon of English Protestantism’, and that it was the ‘visual equivalent of the verbal language of English Protestantism’.73 Hunt painted three versions of The Light of the World, the first in 1851–53 (Appendix Fig. A.1), bought by Thomas Combe, head of Clarendon Press at Oxford, a second smaller version with Frederic George Stephens in 1853–57, thinking that he would find a purchaser,74 and the third, c.1900–04 (Appendix Fig. A.11) with considerable assistance from Edward Robert Hughes, due to Hunt’s failing eyesight.75 The Light of the World had a mixed critical reception, provoking considerable controversy. Nevertheless, the third version was toured through selected parts of the British Empire from 1905 to 1907 and was seen by seven million people in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. It was exhibited in Melbourne at the National Gallery of Victoria in February and March 1906 and it is thought between 150,000 and 200,000 people viewed it there. This figure represented just less than half the population of Melbourne at the time.76 The Art Gallery of New South Wales recorded 302,183 visitors in twenty-five days viewing the painting.77 Of course some people may have seen it more than once. As a commercially successful artist Hunt possessed a degree of business acumen and it is reasonable to assume he would have known of the only official census of attendance at all places of religious worship in Britain taken on 30 March 1851. This was the year in which he began the first version of The Light of the World and the census results would have been another useful indicator of potential markets for religious paintings. The  Maas, pp. 218–19.  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 130. 74  Maas, p. 70. 75  Maas, pp. 104, 106. 76  Maas, pp. 152, 154. 77  Bronkhurst, p. 51. 72 73

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results of the census were made public in 1853 when Hunt was finishing the painting. About 60 per cent of possible worshippers attended services on the day of the census and they were generally middle class, the growing market for art in Victorian Britain. Hunt would have realised this potential, as he had shown himself to be an astute follower of market trends.78 Diana Holman Hunt said she had ‘suspected a more material than spiritual motive’ for her grandfather’s conception of first version of The Light of the World.79 Nevertheless, Hunt maintained that the work sprang from his experiential faith and the painting prompted both critical and popular engagement with contemporary issues around Christian belief, the nature of Jesus and the significance of the Holy Land. When he died in 1910 his obituary in The Times proclaimed that none of the other great artists buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London ‘worked more strenuously or more successfully than he to inspire his fellow men with lofty ideals, and to wed beauty to religion’. Recognising the wide distribution and impact of his images throughout the Empire, The Times also suggested, ‘his pictures had carried him, a revered and familiar friend, into homes without number all over the world’.80

Acclaim and Criticism The Light of the World has been variously described as a quintessential expression of Evangelical Protestantism, of Broad Church thinking and of Anglo-Catholicism. As these three expressions of British Christianity embody vastly different understandings of hermeneutics, Christology, sacramental theology and ecclesiology, the same painting cannot have been intended by the artist to exemplify the beliefs of all three. Nevertheless, the fact that the painting has been thus interpreted strongly suggests the complexity of its symbolic elements and the emotional resonance of its subject matter. When Ruskin wrote in support of The Light of the World in a rebuff to negative reception of the painting, he stressed his interpretation was a personal one. Ruskin stated, ‘Mr Hunt has never explained his work to  Maas, p. 17.  Diana Holman Hunt in Anne Clark Amor, William Holman Hunt: The true PreRaphaelite (London: Constable & Co. Ltd, 1989), p. 9. 80  Deaths, ‘The Late Mr. Holman Hunt’, The Times, 13 September 1910, p. 11. 78 79

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me’. He wrote to The Times 5 May 1854 that Hunt has depicted ‘Christ in his everlasting offices of prophet, priest and king’ and ‘On the left hand side of the picture is seen this door of the human soul through which Christ enters the human heart’.81 When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854, Revelation 3.20 was printed in the accompanying catalogue: ‘Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him and he with me’. Barringer believes The Light of the World ‘demands from the viewer an elaborate process of decoding by reference to numerous biblical passages, rather than to knowledge of the traditions of religious art’. He notes that Ruskin’s letter ‘provided just such a reading’.82 In his celebrated defence of the painting Ruskin described it as follows: On the left-hand side of the picture is seen this door of the human soul. It is fast barred: its bars and nails are rusty; it is knitted and bound to its stanchions by creeping tendrils of ivy, showing that it has never been opened. … Christ approaches it in the night time—Christ, in his everlasting offices of prophet, priest, and king. He wears the white robe, representing the power of the Spirit upon him; the jewelled robe and breastplate, representing the sacerdotal investiture; the rayed crown of gold, inwoven with the crown of thorns; not dead thorns, but now bearing soft leaves, for the healing of the nations. Now, when Christ enters any human heart, he bears with him a twofold light. First the light of conscience, which displays past sin, and afterwards the light of peace, the hope of salvation. The lantern, carried in Christ’s left hand, is this light of conscience. Its fire is red and fierce; it falls only on the closed door, on the weeds which encumber it, and on an apple shaken from one of the trees of the orchard, thus marking that the entire awakening of the conscience is not merely to committed, but to hereditary guilt. … The light which proceeds from the head of the figure … is that of the hope of salvation; it springs from the crown of thorns, and, though itself sad … is yet so powerful. … I believe there are very few persons on whom the picture, thus justly understood, will not produce a deep impression. For my own part, I think it is one of the noblest works of sacred art ever produced in this or any other age.83

 John Ruskin, ‘Letter to the Editor’, The Times, 5 May 1854, p. 9.  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 128. 83  Hunt, Vol. I, p. 416–417. 81 82

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Close visual analysis of versions one and three of The Light of the World does reveal complex and perhaps ambiguous symbolism but that they do convey the central message that the artist says he intended. The painting shows a Christ who is there for anyone who invites Him into their lives as Hunt did in his conversion experience. Wheeler describes The Light of the World as ‘a painting which, though labelled at different times Evangelical, Broad Church and “Papist” in orientation, in fact defeats sectarian readings by presenting a Christ who appeals to every human heart and by making no overt reference to the contentious issues of church authority or biblical authority’.84 Continuing the diversity of interpretations, Maas proposes that, ‘Although Hunt seems to have been sympathetic to the beliefs of the Broad Church, his literal conception of the Bible, his insistence on strict morality, and his use of typological symbolism all suggest a closer affinity with the Evangelical movement’.85 Landow concurs that typology is a key element of the painting, noting that Hunt’s own writing in his Memoir, ‘makes it clear that one of Ruskin’s most important influences came in his explication of typological symbolism which reconciled realism with elaborate iconography’.86 The first version of The Light of the World was bought by the noted Anglo-Catholic, Thomas Combe, who was also a close friend of Hunt. Nevertheless, Mane-Wheoki suggests that Anglo-Catholics distanced themselves from the painting because it embodied an overtly ‘humanistic’ presentation of Christ found ‘wanting in reverence’.87 Yet Mane-Wheoki also suggests the ‘figure of Christ dressed in a magnificent cope cut from the richest fabric and lavishly jewelled, smacked of sacerdotalism (the ascendancy of priestliness as advocated by Anglo-Catholics)’.88 Boime argues that the painting ‘seems to embody the highest aspirations of the Gothic Revival and the Oxford movement, merging ritual and symbolic realism into a spiritually awesome whole’. He argues Hunt’s aim here ‘was to turn the realist strategy on itself, carrying it to the point of such excess that it could oxymoronically convey an unearthly naturalism and arouse a 84  Michael Wheeler, The Light of the World as ‘true sacred art’, in Ruskin’s Artists, ed. by Robert Hewison (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2000), 112–127 (p. 123). 85  Maas, p. 16. 86  Landow, Typological Symbolism, p. 7. 87  Du Faur in Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, ‘The Light of the World: Mission and Message’, in Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision, ed. by Katherine Lochnan and Carol Jacobi (Ontario: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2008), 113–132 (p. 124). 88  Mane-Wheoki, p. 118.

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feeling of spiritual uncanniness’.89 However Hunt wrote, ‘The suspicion of certain thinkers that The Light of the World was painted to support the Puseyite movement had no justification’.90 According to Du Faur, commenting in 1906, Hunt’s aim was ‘to present, not the sorrowing Christ, but the Christ of all time—the same yesterday, today and forever’.91 Hunt’s depiction of Christ definitely did not appeal to everyone. The Light of the World was ‘received frostily’ at the Royal Academy in 1854.92 Writer and historian, Thomas Carlyle, expressed his outrage directly to Hunt. In his Memoir Hunt wrote that Carlyle approved of ‘The Awakened Conscience’ but spoke of ‘The Light of the World’ with disdain: You call that thing … a picture of Jesus Christ … a mere papistical fantasy. … It is a poor misshaped presentation of the noblest, the brotherliest, and the most heroic-minded Being that ever walked God’s earth. Do you ever suppose that Jesus walked about bedizened in priestly robes and a crown, and with yon jewels on his breast, and a guilt aureole round his head? Ne’er crown no pontifical robe did the world e’er give to such as Him … if you realised His character at all you wouldn’t try to make people go back and worship the image that the priests have invented of Him … I tried to declare that I did firmly believe in the idea that I had painted, more than anything I saw with my natural eyes.93

Hunt’s Response Whatever diverse critics and scholars might say, Hunt maintained The Light of the World to be a personal response to a personal spiritual experience. Clearly Carlyle believed that in Victorian Britain a painting had the power to influence a person’s faith and such a painting should be an expression of the artist’s own religious belief. Hunt considered the attitude of reverence important in religious painting and believed that the ‘liberal’ clergy valued this motivation and attitude. In his Memoir Hunt wrote about diverse responses to ‘The Light of the World’. He recalls that when Renan’s Vie de Jesus appeared about 1860 he was told it would

 Boime, p. 97.  Hunt, Vol. II, p. 410. 91  Du Faur in Mane-Wheoki, p. 113. 92  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 130. 93  Hunt, Vol. I, pp. 355–6. 89 90

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‘entirely destroy my understanding of the history in the Gospels’, so when he had the time in Jerusalem in 1869 he read it and concluded: It was an exponent of the prevailing spirit of investigation, not only by comparison with records of the time, but also by reference to Eastern life as traced by a resident in Syria. The failing of the book lay in its lack of imagination concerning the profundity and sublimity of the mind and purpose of Jesus; a mere provincial and enthusiastic dervish of modern type was made to figure in place of the most unflinching proclaimer of truth and love. To exercise original thought on sacred story must, it seems, ever be a challenge to the world. Carlyle, it will be remembered, saw in The Light of the World only a proclamation of ecclesiastical dogma and so denounced it. … On the other hand, the extreme High Church party regarded my humanistic treatment of the life of Christ as wanting in reverence. Fortunately the unprejudiced public instinctively felt an interest in the attempt to make the story live as history, and their demand for engravings from my pictures induced the publishers to give me that support which enabled me to persevere. … In liberal quarters the clergy distinctly gave their approval to my purpose, for they did not fail to see that my work was done with reverence.94

Hunt turns to the Bible for the spiritual truths he represents symbolically in his paintings. For literal truth he looks to the Holy Land itself as he does, for example, in The Scapegoat and The Shadow of Death. In works such as The Awakening Conscience and the Light of the World he is not attempting to paint biblical narratives but to convey spiritual meaning. The Awakening Conscience uses a contemporary secular scene to convey its moral message of forgiveness and salvation, while The Light of the World is the symbolic representation of two New Testament texts, Revelation 3.20 ‘Behold I stand at the door and knock’ and John 8.12 ‘I am the light of the world’. There are also many other passages of scripture which reflect the concepts Hunt attempts to express, that the light of Christ can bring salvation to those who open their hearts. New Testament passages which may have influenced Hunt include: John 1.4–5 … in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John 8.12 … I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.  Hunt, Vol. II, pp. 409–10.

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John 9.5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. John 12.46 I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. Ephesians 3.17 … Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith …. 1 Peter 2.9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you might proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. 1 John 1.5 … God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.95

Thus the painting incorporates complex references to Christology, soteriology and eschatology. With its context in text, The Light of the World was, for many Protestants, a confirmation of a Bible-based faith not dependent on traditional Catholic iconography.96 However, crucial to its interpretation is the realisation that The Light of the World is not the narrative representation of a specific biblical story. For Hunt it is a spiritual painting with an eternal message beyond physical time.97 Stephens suggested that the image is one of hope: although ‘the ivy of indolence’ bars the door, ‘there are marks of the axe and saw upon the trees’. Barringer, reinforcing the previously mentioned Protestant view of work as a religious act, interprets Stephens’s comment as implying ‘a sign of mankind’s potential for redemption through labour’. Quoting Hunt, ‘“the music of the still small voice was the summons to the sluggard to awaken and become a zealous labourer under the Divine master”’, Barringer interprets the painting as not a ‘mystic vision of Christ’ but rather ‘a restatement of the Protestant work ethic, an Evangelical call to arms’.98 A very late work of Hunt, painted in 1895, now in the National Gallery of Victoria, The Importunate Neighbour (Appendix Fig. A.12), picks up the theme of knocking at a door in the night and seeking a response, but in this work it is not the figure of Christ we see. Unlike The Light of the World, this painting is based on a specific passage of scripture. It is a visual representation of a parable in the Gospel of Luke 11.5–13. A man knocks on his friend’s door seeking bread to feed unexpected guests. At first he is 95  The Bible: The New Revised Standard Version (Nashville, Tennessee: Catholic Bible Press, a division of Thomas Nelson Inc., 1993) 96  Neil MacGregor with Erika Langmuir, Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in art (London: BBC Worldwide, 2000), p. 77. 97  George P. Landow, ‘Shadows Cast by The Light of the World: William Holman Hunt’s Religious Paintings, 1893–1905’, The Art Bulletin, 65, 3 (1983), 471–484 (p. 481). 98  Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, p. 130.

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rebuffed, but eventually his friend relents, gets up and gives him what he asks. Jesus says in the parable, ‘Ask, and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened’ and ‘If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’ In the symbolism of The Importunate Neighbour (Appendix Fig. A.12) Hunt has chosen another way to communicate God’s willingness to be present to those who seek him and are receptive to his gifts. In January 1893 Hunt sent a sketch which he had produced during his last trip to the Holy Land to be exhibited at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-­ Colours. From that drawing Hunt developed this painting.99 The symbolism of the painting is consistent with Hunt’s lifelong desire to evoke a sense of authenticity and interpreting it as Hunt intended requires knowledge of the Gospels. It is visually vibrant, with rich blues and greens highlighted in white. In the left foreground of the painting, opposite the door, we see two dogs drinking water freely provided in a bowl which is illuminated by reflective light. Lights from the night sky shine through the gateway and on to the domed buildings in the left background. Our eye is drawn along the pathway, through the arch to lit windows on these buildings which are diagonally opposite the man dressed in a striped robe knocking on his neighbour’s door in the right foreground. Above the door is a menorah above which luxuriant pomegranates grow, fruit which are traditionally symbols of resurrection in Christian iconography. The man’s bare foot is on the doorstep, his head is bowed, his eyes closed, as his left hand presses against door. Only the extended index finger of his right hand lightly touches the wood as he waits to be acknowledged. Hunt must have realised the challenge for the general public of interpreting many of his religious works as he provided detailed exhibition pamphlets to explain major works, also epigraphs and key plates.100 To assist the viewer in interpreting the paintings, Hunt also frequently included biblical texts on the frames of his paintings, or even, as we saw in The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, within the compositions themselves. Both Burke and Baxandall discuss the significance of cultural context, the ‘period eye’, in the interpretation of images and Burke writes of ways in which text, specifically ‘iconotexts’, ranging from the legends on 99  Angus Trumble, Love and Death: Art in the age of Queen Victoria (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2001), p. 204. 100  Landow, Victorian Types, p. 130.

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medals to the captions on photographs, can function as a way of manipulating the viewer’s response. Images, Burke argues, ‘are neither a reflection of social reality nor a system of signs without relation to social reality, but occupy a variety of positions in between these extremes. They testify to the stereotyped yet gradually changing ways in which individuals or groups view the social world, including the world of their imagination.’101 In the context of a discussion of the reception of Australian Aboriginal art in Europe and America, Nelson proposes that ‘the existence of visual language is not in itself enough for universal understanding. Without a spiritual initiation, we have flimsy claims of access; but an initiation cannot, by definition, be gained by the Other.’102 This insight may help to account for the diverse interpretations and sometimes conflicting reception many of Hunt’s religious works received. For example, for the Anglican initiated into the mysteries of typological symbolism, the Scapegoat is a powerful spiritual prefiguring of Christ’s sacrifice but for other viewers it is a sad and disturbing depiction of a dying farm animal. Likewise The Light of the World represented a spectrum of views from spiritual illumination to a travesty but for Hunt it was the expression of his personal conversion experience. In Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Hunt gave his own explanation of points of symbolism in The Light of the World, I may say that any occult meaning in the details of my design was not based upon ecclesiastical or archaic symbolism, but derived from obvious reflectiveness. My types were of natural figures such as language had originally employed to express transcendental ideas, and they were used by me with no confidence that they would interest any other mind than my own. The closed door was the obstinately shut mind, the weeds the cumber of daily neglect, the accumulated hindrances of sloth; the orchard the garden of delectable fruit for the dainty feast of the soul. The music of the still small voice was the summons to the sluggard to awaken and become a zealous labourer under the Divine Master; the bat flitting about only in darkness was a natural symbol of ignorance; the kingly and priestly dress of Christ, the sign of His reign over the body and the soul, to them who could give their allegiance to Him and acknowledge God’s overrule. In making it a night scene, lit mainly by the lantern carried by Christ, I had followed m ­ etaphorical  Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 183.  Robert Nelson, The Visual language of painting (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), p. 186. 101 102

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explanation in the Psalms, ‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path’, with also the accordant allusions by St. Paul to the sleeping soul, ‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand’.103

The Pre-Raphaelite Millais described Hunt’s painting as, ‘a figure of our Saviour in an orchard abundant in fruit, holding in one hand a light [to illustrate the passage “I am the Light of the World”], and the other hand knocking at a door all overgrown by vine branches and briars, which will show how rarely it has been opened’.104 In Christian tradition apple trees are a reference to the Garden of Eden and typologically to the cross, with Christ as the new Adam. Maas also makes reference to The Song of Solomon 2.3 ‘As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and its fruit was sweet to my taste’, a passage not explicitly mentioned by Hunt, Ruskin or Millais in their discussions of the work.105 Of course Hunt is not alone amongst painters, writers and musicians in drawing upon imagery of light and metaphors of the human heart to convey their sense of the numinous, nor, indeed, of using the symbolism of a closed or open door for spiritual redemption. For example, Tractarian theologian Isaac Williams published a poem ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’ in the collection, Sacred Verses, in 1843. This was accompanied by a woodcut illustration replicating the 1824 engraving after Phillip Veit, ‘Christ Knocking at the Door’.106 Hunt’s message is that Christ both knocks at the door of the human heart and is the door to salvation.107 The actual figure of Christ in The Light of the World has prompted widely divergent interpretations. Hunt makes his intention clear, ‘“In England you know spiritual figures are painted as if in vapour. I had a further reason for making the figure more solid than I should have otherwise done in the fact that it is the Christ that is alive for ever more. He was to be firmly and substantially there waiting for the stirring of the sleeping soul.”’108 Curiously, contradicting Hunt’s own statement of intention, Pointon thinks that ‘The painting side-steps the issue of Christ’s bodily presence by invoking the model of fairyland’. The subject matter of fairies  Hunt, Vol. I, pp. 350–1.  John Everett Millais in Maas, p. 115. 105  Maas, p. 116. 106  Maas, pp. 30, 220–1. 107  MacGregor with Langmuir, p. 77. 108  Landow, Typological Symbolism, p. 32. 103 104

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was popularised by Fuseli, Dadd, Maclise and other artists, the most notable work being Joseph (later Sir Joseph) Noel Paton’s celebrated Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania (1847). Pointon contends that Hunt’s Christ is ‘an ungendered presence whose physicality is transposed into the tangible surroundings’ and she refers to the ‘bodyless Christ in The Light of the World’.109 Most writers, however, disagree that Hunt has depicted an ‘ungendered figure’ lacking bodily presence and Pointon’s interpretation is not substantiated by the visual evidence of the painting. Expressing a completely opposite view to Pointon, Landow writes of the 1851–53 version of The Light of the World in the chapel of Keble College, Oxford, ‘He painted the figure of Christ to emphasise solidity and mass because he wanted to avoid the implications of conventional religious art’.110 In looking at the Christ figure Ruskin sees ‘a living presence amongst us now’111 and Mane-Wheoki interprets this representation as having unintentionally suggested ‘the doctrine of the Real Presence and the lamp at the reservation of the consecrated elements of the Eucharist’.112 This is, of course, a Catholic, not Protestant understanding of the sacrament and liturgical practice. For Hunt the lighting itself had spiritual significance in the composition. He elucidated the figure of Christ was ‘“to be seen only by the light of the star of distant dawn behind, and of some moonlight in front with most of all the light ‘to guide us in dark places’ coming from the lantern”’.113 Landow writes that in the painting, ‘Christ’s lantern— whether it be the light of truth or of Christian doctrine—provides most of the illumination’.114 He refers to Ruskin’s letter to children at Winnington Hall in 1860  in which he wrote that ‘Hunt meant the lantern for “the church”, which was very absurd of him’.115 According to Landow it is possible that Hunt had told Ruskin this interpretation but as it ‘does not seem much in accord with Hunt’s general religious views … the chances are that

 Pointon, p. 34.  Landow, Typological Symbolism, p. 32. 111  John Ruskin, in The Works of John Ruskin. Volume V: Modern Painters Volume III, ed. by E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (London: George Allen, 1904), p. 58. 112  Mane-Wheoki, p. 118. 113  Landow, Typological Symbolism, p. 32. 114  Landow, Typological Symbolism, pp. 34. 115  Landow, Typological Symbolism, p. 169. 109 110

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Ruskin was simply asserting his own view’.116 Further illustrating the contradictory and emotional responses elicited from contemporary viewers, a reviewer for the Athenaeum wrote on 6 May 1854 that is ‘a most eccentric and mysterious picture’ the ‘face of this wild fantasy, though earnest and religious, is not that of a Saviour. It expresses such a strange mingling of disgust, fear and imbecility, that we turn from it to relieve the sight.’117 However, Mane-Wheoki suggests that Hunt has achieved a depiction which balances ‘the humanity and divinity of Christ, the corporeal and spiritual’.118 As I have pointed out, Hunt himself observed that Carlyle was dismayed by what he interpreted as the sacerdotal depiction of Christ in The Light of the World, while some Anglo-Catholics, presumably not Coombe who bought it, saw the depiction as too humanistic. The Light of the World was ridiculed by critics and members of the public when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1854 but the ‘authority and eloquence’ of Ruskin’s famous defence helped to change perceptions and to set the scene for the painting to be embraced by Christians in Britain and throughout the world.119 It is hardly surprising that Hunt’s work was viewed by his contemporaries and by critics and art historians ever since with such a diversity of reactions. Christians of all affiliations had their own idea of what Christ should look like and the great historical body of western Christian art provided a proliferation of visual models. The Bible, of course, does not provide any physical descriptions of Jesus. It suggests that amongst all the possible interpretations, based on various theological positions and visual comparisons, the fundamental meaning of The Light of the World is a revelation of the person of Christ, offering a personal relationship to those who accept His call. This view aligns with the evidence of Hunt’s own writing and also with the Christology expressed by Gore in his 1890 publication, On The Results of Biblical Criticism. As previously quoted, Hunt wrote of the painting, ‘“it is the Christ that is alive for ever more. He was to be firmly and substantially there waiting for the stirring of the sleeping soul.”’120 When Gore wrote ‘Christianity is a religion of a Person’ he powerfully reinforced an  Landow, Typological Symbolism, p. 34.  Boime, p. 98. 118  Mane-Wheoki, p. 124. 119  Mane-Wheoki, p. 118. 120  Landow, Typological Symbolism, p. 32. 116 117

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­ nderstanding of Christ which aligns with Hunt’s statements about peru sonal salvation through experience. Gore emphasises his understanding of Jesus as the one who truly reveals God the Father. He reminds his readers that the Church of England does not ask its catechumens if they believe in the Bible but rather if they believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Gore shifts the argument away from the issue, fundamental to Evangelicals, that the words of the Bible are direct revelation; to the Christological position that the person of Christ is the revelation and the Bible is a vehicle by which this revelation has been communicated to humanity.121 Hunt’s professed experience of the risen Christ led him to explore both the Bible and the Holy Land. Empirical evidence underpinned his approach to religion, faith and art. Whatever interpretation one might bring to the Light of the World, its significance cannot be disputed. It served to galvanise theologians, art critics and citizens throughout the British Empire in a way no other painting had. Hunt managed to create an English Christ at a time of British world dominance, yet he also created an image of an eternal Christ inspired by scripture and springing from his personal spiritual, artistic and geographical journey.

121  Gore in James R.  Moore, ed. Religion in Victorian Britain. Volume III: Sources (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 61.

CHAPTER 9

Conclusion

When, during heated debate in the British House of Commons, a comment was made by an Irish Catholic member about Disraeli’s Jewish ancestry, Disraeli replied, ‘Yes, I am a Jew, and while the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon’.1 Thus did he put the history of the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland into perspective against the antiquity of the biblical lands and peoples. The conceptual framing of Palestine and its surrounds as the Holy Land displays the complexity of nineteenth-century Britain’s engagement with the region. It was a time of significant differences in the religious cultures of Protestant faith communities. There were meaningfully different understanding of Christology, hermeneutics and ecclesiology in the teachings of Wesleyan Methodism, Presbyterianism and the Church of England; the latter of which encompassed its own considerable theological diversity. Amid this sectarian diversity, though, there remained a consistent emphasis on personal faith, experience and the conscience of the individual. For nineteenth-century British Protestants of all sectarian positions, with their faith deeply rooted in the Bible, the Holy Land was simultaneously a contemporary geo-political region, an exotic, timeless place and, in a spiritual sense, part of Britain. These elements were not seen as mutually 1  Disraeli, Benjamin. ‘What Disraeli actually said’. Accessed 3/10/2019 from https:// jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/what-disraeli-actually-said/.

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exclusive but were held together by a sense of imperial identity, commercial imperatives and biblical faith. Intellectual and theological shifts in the nineteenth century were significant influences on the creation of a new visual culture and in turn, in many instances, visual rhetoric supported theological shifts. The artworks and writings of David Roberts, Sir David Wilkie and William Holman Hunt illuminate imperial Britain’s perception of its relationship to the Holy Land, which, combined with the primacy of the experiential, grounded in Protestant and Enlightenment thinking and Romantic notions of the sublime, led to innovative visual representations of both the physical region and biblical stories. Debates at the time about the veracity of scripture and the quest for the historical Jesus meshed with a sense of inner pilgrimage and the experience of an actual journey to a land made holy by the footsteps of Jesus, the prophets and apostles. This was a significant conceptual shift from the traditional Catholic pilgrimage to sites made holy by church tradition and the lives of saints. There was an increasing emphasis on personal experiential devotion which did not require priestly mediation and on the authority of scripture, rather than the authority of ecclesiastical tradition. It was a time when many Christians were grappling with the implications for their faith of new scientific theories and discoveries, new approaches to biblical hermeneutics and challenges to the Bible as literally true. As a rhetorical medium the work of David Roberts, David Wilkie and William Holman Hunt reflected significant theological shifts in nineteenth-­century Protestant Britain. However, more than just mirroring these changes, their work was also an impetus for further shifts in religious and visual culture. Importantly, too, the new ease of travel enabled by the development of steamships meant that more people could more comfortably and quickly see the lands of the Bible for themselves and artworks depicting the region could inspire them to undertake the journey. The former Baptist preacher Thomas Cook’s hugely successful travel company organised popular tours, beginning with an 1869 tour up the Nile conducted by Cook himself.2 Such tours enabled a much broader range of people to travel to the Near East than ever before. This also meant that viewers of paintings of the 2  Simon Coleman, ‘From the Sublime to the Meticulous: Art, Anthropology and Victorian Pilgrimage to Palestine’, History and Anthropology, Vol. 13, No. 4, November 2002, 275–290 (p. 275).

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region had firsthand experience to bring to their appreciation or critique of these visual representations. Developments in scientific archaeology also facilitated new understandings of the past and expeditions were frequently mounted with the express purpose of seeking material evidence to support biblical sources. Visual records of archaeological sites and finds were an important part of excavation reports and enabled the dissemination of images relating to past civilisations of the Near East, many contemporaneous with biblical narratives. The developing and responsive new visual culture in nineteenth-­century Britain could reach more and more people through technological developments in lithography, printing and the invention of photography. As well, the increasing demand for exhibitions of art and design made these images accessible to a broader demographic than ever before. It was also the time a specialist art press, with copyright controls, emerged, thus facilitating the dissemination of images to the public and extending commercial opportunities for artists, printers and dealers.3 As Inglis wrote, ‘From its materials and production to its display and consumption, the art of the nineteenth century represented a transformation in Britain’s earlier artistic traditions’.4 It was to this vibrant and changing visual culture that Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt contributed and which also helped shape their careers.

Conceptual Frameworks An analysis of imperial Britain’s engagement with the Near East needs to elucidate the complex interconnections expressed through a visual culture which combined a sense of place as picturesque, sacred, historical and essential to biblical revelation. Protestant theology, Enlightenment reason, Romantic visual culture, scientific and imperial politics all shed light on the values and motivations of the Victorian Age. The fusion of these elements enabled Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt, each to a different extent, to contribute to a reconstruction of British religious culture through the use of pictorial rhetoric. Their artworks became a vehicle for the communication of their understanding of the revelation of the Bible and the centrality of the Holy Land for a Protestant faith based on a belief in the importance of experience. 3  Alison Inglis, ‘The empire of art’, in The Victorian World, ed. by Martin Hewitt (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012), 585–602 (p. 585). 4  Inglis, p. 585.

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Roberts’s lithographs of scenes in the Holy Land and Hunt’s depictions of the figure of Christ became images etched in the religious consciousness of British culture. As Olson, Finnegan and Hope explain, ‘visual rhetoric, like all rhetoric is culturally situated’, that is ‘visual rhetoric is particularized by ways of seeing that have been developed, learned and produced by specifically (“American”) experiences, history and ideologies’.5 Close reading of the visual and written language of Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt has illuminated their motivations as they sought to live out both their Christian faith and their artistic ambitions through visiting and imaging the Holy Land. The extent to which each was shaped by, and contributed to, the visual, religious and political culture in which they lived can be seen particularly through analysis of their writing while in the Holy Land and the ways in which they positioned themselves in their narratives.

New Religious Imagery Each of the three artists discussed prioritised different aspects of their engagement with the Holy Land. For Roberts the physical landscape itself was central, whereas for Wilkie it was the apparent historicity of the sites of biblical narrative. Hunt differed significantly through the development of his overt incorporation of typological symbolism. Typology was an accepted and popular Protestant approach to the interpretation of scripture, well utilised in nineteenth-century British sermons and hymns. Several of Hunt’s works embody this approach but also use figures and compositions often challenging to his contemporaries. Of the three artists Hunt’s work is certainly the most theologically complex. Hunt also differed from Roberts and Wilkie aesthetically in his Pre-Raphaelite conception of visual detail in painting, with its emphasis on observation of the small particulars of the environment and ‘truth to nature’. While Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt all professed to be Protestant Christians, their beliefs and practices were certainly not the same. Although using the same subject matter for different purposes, Roberts and Wilkie accepted the conventional current discourse and language of British Protestantism and this underpinned their journeys to the Near East. Roberts’s depictions of scenes in Palestine, Syria and Egypt incorporated compositional and aesthetic elements of both topographical illustration 5  Lester C. Olson, Cara A. Finnegan, and Diane S. Hope, eds, Visual rhetoric: A reader in communication and American culture (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2008), p. xvii.

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and theatrical scene making, with an understanding of the picturesque. His works, produced and widely disseminated in lithographs, were influential in shaping the British conception of the physical places where the Bible recorded great events happening. Wilkie was known as a genre painter, famous for his depictions of important events in Protestant history as well as every day and politically significant scenes from the perspective of ordinary people—‘history from below’. In his Holy Land works Wilkie wanted to create scenes which would enable believers to deepen their conscientious understanding of Bible stories, unencumbered by layers of ecclesiastical interpretation and complex theological symbolism. Although it was Wilkie who stated a need for a ‘Martin Luther in painting’, he actually had far less influence on subsequent religious or visual culture than either Roberts or Hunt. However, as he died on the return journey from the Holy Land, he did not have the opportunity to develop his sketches into finished paintings for exhibition, sale or reproduction. One can only speculate on what his influence might have been had his stated intentions come to fruition. Hunt was a much more original, unconventional and intellectually complex religious thinker than either Roberts or Wilkie and he sought to express himself as such through his artworks. He was drawn to the Church of England with its intellectual, historical and ecclesiological roots in Roman Catholicism, rather than to the Dissenting churches of Roberts and Wilkie. His writing and the accounts of his contemporaries and family members show Hunt to have been a deep thinker who grappled with issues of personal faith and doubt and who was fascinated by a range of religious ideas, including those of Islam and Judaism. The writings of Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt reveal the influence of notions prevalent in their society: prejudices, stereotypes and assumptions which were, on occasion, challenged by their personal experiences. Textual evidence from their writing at different times and in different genres suggests that each of the three artists had the capacity to modify their views and to reflect critically on their attitudes. Significantly, too, their rhetoric changed depending on their intended audience: family member, politician, potential purchaser of paintings, journal or retrospective memoir. Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt were products of their Scottish and English socio-cultural and historical contexts and the degree of freedom they actually had to be innovative in style and subject matter within these contexts is debatable. As professional artists each was constrained to a degree by market demand and had to read the expectations of their audience. In

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some instances, such as the Scapegoat and The Shadow of Death, Hunt’s work was too obscure in its theological concepts, or too visually confronting, to gain wide popular or critical reception or understanding. In contrast, of course, The Light of the World became the visual emblem of British Protestantism, was widely reproduced and displayed in a multitude of forms and was toured throughout the colonies to huge audiences. Roberts, on the other hand, provided just the images of place desired by an audience keen to know what the geography of the Bible looked like so they might contemplate the physical places which they believed were made sacred by the presence of Jesus, the apostles and the prophets. The lithographs resulting from his journey were both popular and accessible, hence helping to shape the visual language of biblical religion at the time and for subsequent decades. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources it is clear that new visual religious imagery had a powerful influence on Protestant believers who sought a distinct iconography aligned with their Bible-based faith and different from the visual conventions of Roman Catholicism. They also valued a visual guide to the Holy Land to aid their inner spiritual pilgrimage. This desire was part of the emphasis placed on faith strengthened by experience and a commitment of the heart, as well as reason and intellect. The visual rhetoric which developed echoed the literary and verbal rhetoric of hymns, stories and sermons. There is demonstrable causality between the different religious perspectives of Roberts, Wilkie and Hunt and their choice of subject matter, symbolism and style in their artworks. This can only be understood through deep consideration of the theological and religious diversity they each represent. These artists’ rich contributions to British religious and visual culture need to be seen in the context of the complex and changing social, religious and theological milieu in which they lived. Hunt explained the symbolism of The Light of the World in this way, ‘the still small voice was the summons to the sluggard to awaken and become a zealous labourer under the Divine Master … the kingly and priestly dress of Christ, the sign of His reign over the body and the soul, to them who could give their allegiance to Him and acknowledge God’s overrule’.6 This statement encapsulates the British Protestant ideals of ardent labour, response to God’s call and personal commitment to Christ. David Roberts, 6  William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Vol. I (London: Macmillan and Co., 1905), pp. 350–1.

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David Wilkie and William Holman Hunt were ‘zealous labourers’ for their art and their faith. In 1890 the American minister from the Reformed Church and Presbyterian Church, Thomas de Witt Talmage published a book of sermons based on his Holy Land travels. He wrote, ‘Do you see how the Holy Land and the Holy Book fit each other? God with His left hand built Palestine, and with His right wrote the Scriptures, the two hands of the same Being. And in proportion as Palestine is brought under close inspection, the Bible will be found more glorious and more true.’7 In the twenty-­ first century Western Christians are still visiting the Holy Land in significant numbers. They are continuing the long tradition of pilgrimage and following the nineteenth century desire to experience with the heart and mind the places where Jesus walked.

7  Talmage in Hilton Obenzinger, American Palestine: Melville, Twain and the Holy Land Mania, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 199.

Appendix

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Fig. A.1  William Holman Hunt, Light of the World, 1851–53, oil on canvas over panel, Keble College Chapel, Oxford

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Fig. A.2  David Roberts, The Approach of the Simoon, From Egypt and Nubia (London: F.G. Moon, 1846–49). Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Fig. A.3  William Holman Hunt, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, 1854–60, oil on canvas, Birmingham Museum and Art

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Fig. A.4  William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death, oil on canvas, 1870–73, Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester

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Fig. A.5  David Roberts, Departure of the Israelites, 1829, oil on canvas, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham

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Fig. A.6  David Wilkie, His Highness Muhemed Ali, Pacha of Egypt, 1841, oil paint on board, Tate Britain, London

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Fig. A.7  David Roberts, Edinburgh from Calton Hill, 1858, oil on canvas, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

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Fig. A.8  David Roberts, artist, Arabs of the Tribe of the Benisaid Feby 17th 1839, Louis Haghe, lithographer, Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Fig. A.9  David Wilkie, The Preaching of Knox Before the Lords of the Congregation, 10th June 1559, 1831–32, oil on panel, Tate Britain, London

Fig. A.10  William Holman Hunt, The Scapegoat, 1854–56, oil on canvas, Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight (National Museums Liverpool)

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Fig. A.11  William Holman Hunt, The Light of the World, c. 1900–04, oil on canvas, St Paul’s Cathedral, London

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Fig. A.12  William Holman Hunt, The Importunate Neighbour, 1895, oil on canvas 36.4 × 51.7 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

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Fig. A.13  William Holman Hunt, Awakening Conscience, 1853–54, oil on canvas, Tate Britain, London

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Index

A Approach of the Simoon, The, 46 Arabs, attitudes to, 75, 77, 80, 85–86 Archaeology, biblical, 37, 40, 53, 152, 153, 158, 163, 164, 205 Architecture, importance of, 78–79, 99 Awakening Conscience, The, 175 B Bedford, Francis, 19, 160 Biblical criticism, 55 Biblical typology, 12, 149 British religion, 27, 29–31 Broad Church movement, 31 C Catholic devotional practices, 43 Catholic traditions, attitudes towards, 117, 129, 204 Census of worship, 28, 190 Christ and the Two Marys, 165, 166

Christian diversity in Jerusalem, 59–61 Christology, 32, 33, 173, 196 Cook, Thomas, 41, 42, 204 Croly, George, 92–95, 108 D Darwin, Charles, 18, 158 Disraeli, Benjamin, 42 Dress, significance of, 73–76 E Eschatology, 13 Established church, 28, 29 F Farrar, Frederic William, 35, 36, 156, 157 Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, 34, 35, 179–182 Frith, Francis, 19–25, 82, 83, 95

© The Author(s) 2020 A. M. Burritt, Visualising Britain’s Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41261-6

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INDEX

G Gore, Charles, 33, 201, 202

M Millenarianism, 13, 16, 57

H Hermeneutics, 159 Holman Hunt, William complex theologies, 187, 207 faith, 25, 151, 169–171 Memoir, 27, 150, 151, 153 other writings, 154, 156, 166 Painter of Christ, 149 symbolic representation, 149, 156, 166, 195, 208 views of Arabs and Jews, 177, 180, 181 Hymns, significance of words, 49, 50, 176

N Newman, Cardinal John Henry, 17, 37, 56

I Iconography, 37, 139, 146 Importunate Neighbour, The, 196, 197 J Jerusalem Heavenly home, 49, 51, 119, 145 Jerusalem (Blake), 16 Jews, attitudes towards, 57–58, 99, 119, 137 L Life of Christ, 35, 36 Light of the World acclaim and criticism, 191–194, 196, 199–201 Hunt’s response, 194, 196, 198, 199 Light of the World, The, 6, 27, 34, 35, 149, 175–177, 189, 190 Lives of Jesus, 34–36, 176

O Orientalism, 9, 10, 64, 137 Ottoman Empire, 39, 63, 64, 132 Oxford Movement, 17, 56 P Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF), 15, 40, 42, 161–163 Panorama of Jerusalem, 55 Period eye, 197 Photography, 18, 19 Picturesque, 69–71, 79 Pilgrimage, spiritual, 52 Pilgrim’s Progress, 43, 47, 48 Political influence British, 39 Politics of the Near East, 63, 84, 105, 159, 160 Preaching of Knox before the Lords of the Congregation, 10th June 1559, The, 121 Pre-Raphaelites, 16, 150, 154 Presbyterian, 4, 45, 69, 114, 118 Prince of Wales visit, 40, 159–161 Q Queen Victoria, 15, 60, 159, 160 R Roberts attitudes to Islam, 79–82, 85

 INDEX 

Grand Tour, 60 imperative for his art, 65–66, 68 impetus for Holy Land visit, 63 lithographs, 45, 106–112, 207 Palestine as holy, 97 understanding of Judaism, 102 upbringing, 61, 63, 67, 68, 90, 91 S Sacred geography, 124, 141 Said, Edward, see Orientalism Sayce, Archibald, 32 Scapegoat, The, 166, 183–185 Shadow of Death, The, 35, 187, 188 Slave trade, 76 Suez Canal, 42 T Theological debates in the Church of England, 172, 173 Tourism, Holy Land, 39

239

Tractarian, 17, 31, 56 Tübingen, School of, 18 Typological symbolism, 149, 157, 164, 167, 181, 188, 195 W Wilkie, David British imperial ideology, 136 experiential understanding of the Bible faith, 125, 128 genre painting, 114, 121 a ‘Martin Luther’ required, 113, 115, 142, 207 personal faith, 116, 145 place of biblical story, 113 political and military art, 129, 133 premature death, 132 Scottish Presbyterian art, 120–123 scripture painting, 113–116, 126–131, 134, 135, 140, 142 upbringing, 131