The Rending of the Veil, c.1867-68. Watercolour and gouache on paper, 24¼ x 30 inches (61.6 x 76.0 cm). Private collection. C.lick on image to enlarge it
This work was shown at the Royal Academy in 1869, his final exhibit at that institution. Scott then exhibited it at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1870, no. 100. The subject is taken from the gospel of St. Matthew, chapter 27, verses 50-51. “Jesus when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.” In his watercolour Scott chose not to follow the direction of the tear in the veil as indicated in the biblical text. The Crucifixion is shown in the background to the upper right. Scott made an attempt to render the high priest’s garments and accessories archeologically correct by following descriptions set out in Leviticus. Hiliary Morgan [Underwood] has suggested that the religious meaning of the painting should be understood in terms of typological symbolism. “The sacrifice of the lamb on the altar of the temple prefigures the death of Christ according to Christian theology, but from the moment depicted in the present work, that very death renders such sacrifice unnecessary.” Scott himself explained the subject in a letter to its first owner James Leathart: ”The design represents the moment of Christ dying, the crucifiction being visible through the brass trellis: the Levit and priests are sacrificing the burnt offering of the lamb, the type of Christ, the lightning surrounds this typical act without touching the group” (Pre-Raphaelites, 114).
This subject began as a pen-and-ink drawing that Scott sent to Leathart in 1861 in the hope that he would commission a finished watercolour based on this design. Scott did not complete the finished watercolour until the winter of 1867-68, however. On March 21, 1870 Scott wrote a letter to Leathart saying the watercolour was currently on exhibition at the Scottish Academy with no direct offer on it. Scott described it as his “best watercolour” and Leathart finally agreed to buy it in exchange for several other paintings by Scott in his collection and the sum of £50. D. G. Rossetti praised the work and referred to it as “greased lightning”. This watercolour was also greatly admired by Algernon Swinburne. In a letter to Alice Boyd of March 1891 he writes: “I am very glad to hear he made an etching from ‘The Rending of the Veil’, and I look forward eagerly to the chance of receiving a copy…I always thought it the most sublime and nobly imaginative of all his designs known to me.” (36.) The etching was one of seventeen etchings by Scott for an illustrated Bible published by A. Fullerton & Co., Edinburgh and New York, in 1865-66.
Bibliography
Fredeman, William E. “A Pre-Raphaelite Gazette: The Penkill Letters of Arthur Hughes to William Bell Scott and Alice Boyd, 1886-1897.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, 50, No. 1, (1967) .
Morgan, Hiliary. Burne-Jones, The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Century, Vol. I, London: Peter Nahum, 1989, (cat. 28, 47).
Pre-Raphaelites. Painters and Patrons in the North East. Newcastle: Laing Art Gallery, 1989.
Last modified 7 February 2022