Man of Sorrows, by Sir Joseph Noel Paton, RSA

Man of Sorrows

Sir Joseph Noel Paton, RSA

1883

The Sandringham Museum

This is one of three paintings, a triptych consisting of two replicas of earlier works, either side of a new work. This is the replica on the left, a reduced copy of a painting of the same title, executed for Paton's friend and patron, Haydon Hare (see Schindler 119), completed in 1875, and now in the collection of the Laing Gallery, Newcastle. As for the triptych, Queen Victoria commissioned this for the private chapel at Osborne on the Isle of Wight. It was installed there in 1885. Queen Mary later gave it to St Mary's Church, Anmer, near Sandringham in Norfolk, but it was affected by the damp there, and was subsequently removed, restored, and put on display in this other royal residence — the nearby Sandringham House. [Commentary continues below.]

Photograph and text by Jacqueline Banerjee, with thanks to the museum for allowing photography. Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.

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Man of Sorrows was a very popular work, considered by the Art Journal to be "not merely one of Sir Noël's greatest achievements, but one of the greatest religious pictures of our time" (113). It would have been familiar through exhibitions and especially through engravings to many besides the Queen herself. Very much in the powerfully "conceptual" style of the German Nazarenes, it depicts Jesus after the temptation in the wilderness, but the title comes from Isaiah 53:3: "He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows," further explained by one admirer of the painting: "He was 'The Man of Sorrows' because he came to save, to redeem, to atone for sorrowing men" (Davies 24). It is one of the traditional ways of looking at Jesus, like "The Good Shepherd" on the other side:

These subjects provide idealizations of Christ in his aspects as protector of the Christian flock and potential martyr wrestling with his human fears. Paton's allegorical intentions can be seen in a journal entry from 12 July 1875: "Much danger of losing sense of the 'ideal Lamb' which is carried in bosom of saviour by working too closely from the natural specimen...." The monumental single figure imagery of the wings underscores Christ's divine attributes as ultimate Redeemer through his compassionate sacriﬁce. [Schindler 119]

St Mary's church still displays very good prints of the three works.

Related Material

Bibliography

Davies, Rev. David. Sacred Themes and Famous Paintings. London: Alexander and Shepheard, 1885.

Schindler, Richard A. "Sir Noel Paton and the Grail Quest: The Arthurian Mythos as Christian Art." The Arthurian Revival: Essays on Form, Tradition, and Transformation. Ed. Debra Mancoff. New ed. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015. 115-31.

"Sir Joseph Noël Paton, His Life and Work." Art Journal. Vol. 57 (1895). 97-128. Internet Archive. Contributed by the Getty Research Institute. Web. 3 October 2018.

Created 3 October 2018