BRANGWYN & CHESTERTON

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 113, 6 February 1937, Page 23

BRANGWYN & CHESTERTON

“The Way of tlie Cross,” an interpretation by Frank Brangwyn, R.A..; with a commentary by G. K. Chesterton. (London: Hodder and Stoughton). One of the last pieces of writing G. K. Chesterton did was the “commentary” on this series of pictures by the well-known modern artist, Frank Brangwyn, representing the traditional 14 “Stations of the Cross.” It may not be generally known that Chesterton commenced his career as an artist, studying at the Slade School of Art, selling sketches to magazines, and illustrating such books as Belloc’s “The Man Who Made Gold.” When he first took to writing, it was as an art critic in the “Bookman,” and his later works include little books on painters such as Watt. As a recent lecturer pointed out, his own essays and stories are characterised by “great washes of colour.” As an artist wbo turned writer yet never forgot his .first love, Chesterton may perhaps be compared with William Blake. Both his artistic leanings and his Catholicism make Chesterton a peculiarly appropriate “commentator” for these pictures. In his commentary he appears first as' au art critic, liis Catholicism coming further to the fore as he proceeds. His appreciation of the pictures as pictures is exceedingly valuable, and does much to help the lay reader to see their best qualities. Dealing, for instance, with Brangwyn’s treatment of particular faces he writes: — To take one or two cases out of scores: notice the contrast between the two most prominent fadfes in the first scene of Christ falling under the Cross; the old Pharisee really gibbering with a positive and personal emotion, shaking with shrill and senile decision, gone ga-ga with hatred; and, opposite to him, the long, lined, patient, lifeless face of the soldier or official leaning automatically to lift the cross; cold, dull, quite callous, quite without cruelty; doing his job; the face of any tired workman bending over a carpenter’s bench. Chesterton also manages to convey the inner unity and progression in the series, and the particular aspect of Christ and of the Passion story which the artist has seized upon. In his conclusion, he shows how the endless appeal of this theme to painters of all ages depends upon the traditional Christian view of the significance of Christ’s person and work. If He had been merely human, there might be much to be said for the modern sceptics camplaint that all this concentration upon His Cross is morbid. If any modern man should say. “You make too much of the sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth,’’ it is strictly logical answer to say, “It might or might not be too much for the suffering® of Jesus of Nazareth; it Is not too much for the Bufferings of Jesus ■ Christ.’!