The Garden of Gethsemane, by William Dyce (1806-1864). c.1855. Oil on millboard. 16 1/2 x 12 3/8 inches (41.8 x 31.3 cm); Collection of Sudley House, National Museums, Liverpool, accession no. WAG 221. Image courtesy of Sudley House via Art UK, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]


The biblical episode of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is well known, since it appears in a four gospels: "Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, 'Sit here while I go over there and pray.' He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, 'My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me'" (Matthew 36, 26-28). Mary Bennett has usefully described the scene portrayed in Dyce's painting: "View is of a glen below stark hills at twilight, with a new moon and the evening star above. Dominating the landscape, Christ, a luminous small figure in his blue robe, turns, absorbed in thought, away from the rocky path which leads to a half-open gate towards dark woods" (57). A stream running between rocky boulders is seen in the foreground. Christ is shown in isolation, not surrounded by his disciples, showing just how alone he was during this momentous period of his life just prior to his arrest and subsequent crucifixion.

Dyce never travelled to the Holy Land and makes no attempt in this painting to depict a realistic biblical landscape. As Bennett has also suggested: "His use of landscape can be seen as expressive of the immensity of geological time and the isolation of man, and links his scientific and artistic interests with his religious beliefs" (56). This trend is increasingly seen in his religious subject landscapes of the late 1850s and early 1860s.

The Garden of Gethsemane is undated and was never exhibited, making its dating problematic and controversial. Bennett has suggested a date in the late 1850 because she felt it was closer in technique to Dyce's late religious subject paintings that incorporate Pre-Raphaelite landscapes (56). Allen Staley, however, has suggested an earlier date for this work, in the early 1850s, because "there is still no hint of Pre-Raphaelite influence. The twilight glow over the landscape, in which Christ is proportionately smaller than the figures in The Flight into Egypt, gives the picture an aura of mystical stillness quite unlike the mood of Dyce's later religious paintings" (Staley, 1973, 163). In a later publication Staley again argued for a date in the early 1850s: "It does not show Pre-Raphaelite tonality and elaboration of detail. The twilight glow, recalling artists of Dyce's own generation, such as Samuel Palmer conveys a very un-Pre-Raphaelite poetry of mood, enveloping the small figure in a veil of mystical stillness, quite unlike the literally recorded landscape of Dyce's later treatment of a similar subject [The Man of Sorrows]" (Staley, 2004, 104). Emily Thomson agrees: "In comparison to the minutely detailed religious landscapes that Dyce completed during this period [late 1850s] such as David in the Wilderness and Man of Sorrows the broad style of this picture would seem to indicate an earlier date" (156).

As for Dyce's intentions in painting this particular picture, Marcia Pointon has provided a most convincing argument:

Gethsemane can also be seen primarily as a religious subject painting in which landscape is brilliantly used to reinforce the artist's presentation of Christ, the man, in his most human predicament. No wonder William did not look to the Holy Land for geographically accurate landscape backgrounds. His native scenery had far more to offer an artist who valued the emotive and symbolic qualities of a landscape as a means of conveying a specific religious conviction. In Gethsemane William depicts a figure even smaller in relation to his surroundings than is David in the picture of that name. Whereas David appears jubilant, feet astride, looking heavenward from his vantage point high above us, Christ appears intent, head bowed, cloak wrapped tightly around him as he ascends rough ground in a direction which leads him out of the picture. The fact that these figures are small in relation to the total surface of the canvas does not mean they are incidental features in what is primarily a naturalistic landscape painting. On the contrary, figure and landscape accord in a sensitively calculated total pictorial statement. The landscape element is so controlled as to convey most effectively the mood and the dramatic implications of an event in which the human figure is so overwhelmingly dominant as to render his actual size immaterial. We view Christ in Gethsemane from a position above the valley and the eye travels down the winding, stony, boulder-strewn path to a narrow gate set in a wall. Dark, lowering hills and thickly foliated trees oppress and bear down upon the small and vulnerable figure. All the confidence and airiness of David are lacking in this picture. Christ seems a small, lost figure as he turns from the difficult path towards no visible goal. If one considers the account of Christ's hours in the Garden of Gethsemane as described in the New Testament, it can be seen how Dyce calculatedly uses the landscape so familiar to him as a symbolic and as an emotional, associative means of expression. The narrow winding path and the half-open gate must be taken for what they are, symbols of the difficult path that Christ must tread. The gate is open ready for him and the path apparently leads to the gloomiest and densest of forests. But above the forest a bright sky holds promise for the future. Not only the details of the closely observed landscape are important but also the general formation of the land. The geological structure of the plateau country in David offers a view calculated to inspire optimism whilst the claustrophobic valley of Gethsemane fills us with doubt and a sense of foreboding. [163-64]

Bibliography

Bennett, Mary. Artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Circle. The First Generation., 1988, cat. 221, 56-58.

The Garden of Gethsemane. Art UK. Web. 19 December 2024.

Pointon, Marcia. William Dyce 1806-1864, A Critical Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.

Staley, Allen. The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973.

Staley, Allen and Christopher Newall. Pre-Raphaelite Vision Truth to Nature. London, Tate Publishing, 2004, cat. 54, 104.

Thomson, Emily Hope. William Dyce and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision. Ed. Jennifer Melville. Aberdeen: Aberdeen City Council, 2006, cat. 41, 156-57.


Created 19 December 2024