Week Ten: The Imposter by Peter Howson

March 10, 2019

Week Ten: The Imposter by Peter Howson

As we continue into the season of Lent with our survey of works in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, I have selected a graphite on gessoed wood drawing of the Mocking of Christ this week by one of the great masters of contemporary sacred art: Peter Howson. The Scotland-based artist comes closer than any active art-maker I know to capturing the agonized emotional intensity of images of the Passion of Christ by North European Masters like Matthias Grunewald and Hieronymus Bosch. Jesus, the supposed imposter and despised scapegoat commands our attention as the fixed point in a vortex of human faces distorted by suspicion, scorn, hatred and rage. In this claustrophobic hell, he, alone, stares out at us with a look of pained love and compassionate understanding. Howson has masterfully reworked traditional imagery of the Man of Sorrows for a modern culture supersaturated with brutality and violence. (John Kohan)