Artists in Profile: Holy Land Bible Illustrators

July 5, 2020

Artists in Profile: Holy Land Bible Illustrators

My second essay on religious art created for a popular audience showcases works in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection from an intrepid group of artist-illustrators who travelled to Palestine at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the modern era in search of local color to give greater authenticity to illustrations intended for Bibles and other sacred texs. This interest in the historical accuracy of illustrative biblical art came in response to the 1863 publication of The Life of Jesus by French Theologian Ernest Renan, whose travels in the Middle East had led him to question basic Christian dogma. English Pre-Raphaelite Artist William Holman Hunt was the first major artist of faith to take up the gauntlet thrown down by Renan and travel to Palestine in search of religious inspiration, followed by onetime French Society Artist  J. James Tissot, who set the gold standard for Holy Land Bible illustrators in his magisterial work, The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, with 365 "compositions" based on sketches of various sites in the Lands of the Bible. English Artists Harold Copping and Elsie Anna Wood (left) offered Protestant variations on Tissot's baroquely Roman Catholic imagery, gleaned from their own Holy Land sketchbooks. The major American illustrator to join these Middle East art-trekkers was Dean Cornwell, whose journey to the region resulted in two suites of art, not intended for a Christian publishing house or a mission society but for the popular American magazine, Good Housekeeping. A detailed account of the quest for the historical Jesus in sacred art can be found in the new Holy Land Bible Illustrators page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)