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To mark Good Friday, this year I bring a selection of more modern depictions of the Crucifixion, starting with William Blake in the early years of the nineteenth century.

William Blake (1757–1827), The Crucifixion: ‘Behold Thy Mother’ (c 1805), ink and watercolour on paper, 41.3 x 30 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by the executors of W. Graham Robertson through the Art Fund 1949), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-crucifixion-behold-thy-mother-n05895

Blake’s The Crucifixion: ‘Behold Thy Mother’ from about 1805 is a traditional scene from the Passion, and refers to the Gospel of John, chapter 19 verses 26-27:
When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, “Woman, behold thy son!” Then saith he to the disciple, “Behold thy mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

Traumatic childhoods can cause people to attempt to flee their lives by cultivating and pursuing fantasies, or utopic lives, believing that they’ll make up for all the sorrow and harmonize their existence. But, the fantasies never do, with reality pushing back relentlessly.

Throughout history, utopias were the dreamlands of serenity, wherein its residents remained immune from all forms of physical and emotional suffering. And because so many of us believe that we can’t confront and tolerate our negative emotions, we delusionally attempt to create our own knockoffs. The question I get asked most in my work is, “How can I stop feeling that?” ‘That’ can mean sad, angry, afraid, hurt, or guilty. Fundamentally, the person asking doubts their ability to stand those feelings. And doubts their ability to continue living their lives with them.

So, many of my clients are held captive.

But, can you live with guilt or sadness…

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Les Nabis on Wikiwand

Pierre Bonnard on Wikiwand

Japonisme on Wikiwand

The Nabis at The Art Story

Pierre Bonnard at The Art Story

Bonnard, Pierre, Colta Feller Ives, Helen Emery Giambruni, and Sasha M. Newman. 1989. Pierre Bonnard, the graphic art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15324coll10/id/92079 , (accessed 8 Nov 2018).

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Les Nabis At Sunnyside

Pierre Bonnard at wikimedia

Pierre Bonnard at Christie’s

Art by Theme at Giverny Museum of Impressionism

Thanks for Visiting 🙂

~Sunnyside

“…Simone Fayet, Gustave Fayet’s daughter, is represented taking her first communion in front of a backdrop of stained glass. Like the portrait which Redon had painted of her two years earlier, Simone Fayet avec sa poupe, the young girl’s expression is serious and thoughtful...The composition of the work is unusual. Simone, seen in profile, occupies only the first third of the composition, the rest being devoted to scenery...the stained glass occupying half of the work is directly inspired by the stained glass at Chartres, for it was during a visit to the cathedral there with Fayet in June 1908 that the artist was commissioned to paint the portrait of his…

Fierce Appetites: Lessons from my year of untamed thinking is a collection of personal essays by Irish medieval historian Elizabeth Boyle. Sub-(sub-)titled Loving, Losing and Living to Excess in My Present and in the Writings of the Past, the book was published in 2022 by Penguin, and (appropriately enough) I’ve read it during Cathy‘s Reading Ireland month ’23

Part memoir and part deep-dive into medieval Irish poetry, it meditates on the interconnectedness of time and place, and describes a year in Boyle’s life, the pandemic year of 2020, which opens with her father’s death in January.

“My brother poured seventeen sachets of sugar into his black coffee. I muttered to him, ‘If dad dies while you’re adding all these fucking sugars I will never speak to you again.’

We walked back to the ward. Dad had died…”

There are 12 chapters, broken down by month, containing personal meditations…