The Convent Garden, by H. Clarence Whaite

The Convent Garden

H. Clarence Whaite (1828-1912)

1864

H 126 x W 100 cm.

Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery

Accession no. 96

Purchased from James Kenyon, JP, 1896

On either side of a walk, ancient yew trees have woven their branches together to form a splendid natural canopy. This shelters a group of nuns just as well as any church nave could. [Commentary continues below.]

Image download, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Image released by the museum on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND), via Art UK.

In fact, man's handiwork, the diminutive church in the middle distance, seems insignificant beside the arch of God's own creation. What better — or, one feels, holier — place could there be, in which to take rest and commune with like minds, and the Creator? The tree trunks are shown in fine, painstaking detail. A lopped branch allows a glimpse of the convent bell-tower, its opening framed by a much smaller Romanesque arch, through the tree on the left. Significantly, perhaps, yews were long considered to be sacred trees. They are regularly found in churchyards.

Created 17 January 2022