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Roger Fry strongly advocated studying the work of the Old Masters, especially early Florentine painters. In 1917, he curated the ‘Exhibition of Omega Copies and Translations’ at the Omega Workshops, featuring twenty-three works copied from or influenced by Old Master paintings. Fry exhibited eight works. In the preface to the catalogue, he describes how copied works “[...] are hardly ever literal; they do not pretend to be; they are perhaps better termed translations. They have, no doubt some relation to the original, but they do not profess to give the spectator the same feelings as the original. They are, in fact, independent works of art.”[1]
In April 1917, Fry, probably referring to the present work, wrote to Vanessa Bell, “I’m copying a St Francis out of his big fresco at Assisi,” [presumably fig.1]. With “enlightened eyes”, Fry was drawn to how, by studying the fresco’s forms in detail, “one finds just the kind of purposeful distortion and pulling of...
Roger Fry strongly advocated studying the work of the Old Masters, especially early Florentine painters. In 1917, he curated the ‘Exhibition of Omega Copies and Translations’ at the Omega Workshops, featuring twenty-three works copied from or influenced by Old Master paintings. Fry exhibited eight works. In the preface to the catalogue, he describes how copied works “[...] are hardly ever literal; they do not pretend to be; they are perhaps better termed translations. They have, no doubt some relation to the original, but they do not profess to give the spectator the same feelings as the original. They are, in fact, independent works of art.”[1]
In April 1917, Fry, probably referring to the present work, wrote to Vanessa Bell, “I’m copying a St Francis out of his big fresco at Assisi,” [presumably fig.1]. With “enlightened eyes”, Fry was drawn to how, by studying the fresco’s forms in detail, “one finds just the kind of purposeful distortion and pulling of planes that you get in El Greco and Cézanne and the same kind of sequence in the contours.”[2]
The present work relates to a painting in St Hilary Church in Cornwall (fig.?). Between the two world wars, St Hilary became the setting for Anglo-Catholic Ritual, with local artists contributing to the decorative interior scheme. Bernard Walke, the vicar of St Hilary, later recalled: ‘The painting above the Altar of St. Francis owes its existence to a lunch I had with Roger Fry at a restaurant in Bloomsbury. Roger Fry, whom I then met for the first time, talked brilliantly on art and its relation to religion, especially the Catholic religion, of which he expressed his intense dislike. Waiters stood round waiting for us to finish our lunch and go, but Roger Fry went on talking about the Catholic Faith. When we did rise from the table he placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “I would like to paint a picture of St. Francis for your church.” And so the picture was painted and set above the altar of the saint.’[3]
The present work served as the prototype for the larger St. Hilary canvas, which is smoother in execution and more resolved in the background, befitting a work intended to educate and inspire a church-going audience.
[1] Richard Howell, ‘Copies and Translations: Roger Fry, Old Masters and the Omega Workshops’, The British Art Journal, vol. XVI, no. 1, p.53
[2] Roger Fry to Vanessa Bell, Durbins, 6 April 1917. The Letters of Roger Fry. ed. Denys Sutton, London: Chatto & Windus, 1972, p.408.
[3] Bernard Walke, Twenty Years at St Hilary, Truro: Truran, 2002, pp. 108-9.
