PROTEST AT PICTURES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 114, 16 May 1931, Page 7

PROTEST AT PICTURES

SIR W. ORPEN’S WORK A BIBLICAL SUBJECT. LONDON, May 8. A storm of controversy is likely to bo aroused by Sir William Orpen’s Academy picture “Palm Sunday, A.D. 33.” Alany visitors at a private view were obviously shocked, says the NewsChronicle, and interpreted the paint ing as something like a caricature of Christ. Air Gui St. Bernard, the News-Chron-icle art critic, writes; “Crowds looking at a comic donkey bearing a comic figure representing Christ being blessed by ridiculous figures beyond, will not call it comedy, but bad taste. Whatever the artist may have had in mind, the picture may be interpreted as a caricature of Clitlsl, and regarded as an affront.” The News-Chronicle asked Sir William Orpcn what the picture meant. He replied; “If people read the Bible they will understand the picture.” He disclosed that the girls helling the palm branches were his three daughters. After the first storm of protest had partly subsided, a critic noticed a remarkable similarity between the central figures in tho painting and a twelfth century sculpture which is one of the treasures of the I’ergamoii Alu scum, in Berlin. When the similarity was pointed out to Sir William Orpen, he admitted tnat the A-ulpturc was the source of his inspiration. Ho had it specially photographed and enlarged, and drew his Academy picture from the photograph. Sir William claimed that, his action was legitimate. “I can put any work of art into my pictures without acknowledgment,” he ’I he secretary of the Royal Academy, Air Walter T.amb, said that lie thought, that the rule relating to the inadmissibility of copies had not been infringed. Tie declared that an artist could legitimately use photography to refresh his mind.