Picture in Focus: The Good Shepherd by Richard Hook

June 25, 2017

Picture in Focus: The Good Shepherd by Richard Hook

My series on new images of the Good Shepherd from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection draws to a close this week with a reproduction of a drawing on the theme by Bible Illustrator Richard Hook. During the Swinging Sixties, the one time commercial artist had a mandate from the Concordia Publishing House to come up with an image of Christ that would be more modern and masculine than the beautifully coiffed, Nordic-featured images of Jesus by Illustrator Warner Sallman that, then, dominated the popular religious art market.  The Sallman version of The Lord is My Shepherd (updating a popular earlier depiction by German Artist Bernard Plockhurst) showed a gentle Jesus cuddling a lamb in a pleasant field beside a rippling brook. In Hook's variation, now on display in the Richard & Frances Hook profile page in the Sacred Artists section, we see a dynamic Christ with a full-grown sheep balanced on his shoulders, who has no need of rod nor staff to lead his flock through high-cliffed, fearsome valleys. The Sacred Art Pilgrim will be gone next month on his own quest for still waters and green pastures, returning in August. (John Kohan)