St. Veronica, early 1920s?

Sir Frank Brangwyn RA (1867 - 1956)

RA Collection: Art

A study of Saint Veronica holding out her veil to wipe Christ's face as he carries his cross. Veronica stands on the far left of the composition holding the small veil in front of her face but the pictorial space is dominated by the figure of Christ who is viewed from the left in profile, bending forwards under the weight of the cross.

Although the story of Saint Veronica wiping the face of Jesus is not mentioned in the gospels, it is traditionally depicted as the sixth scene of the 'Stations of the Cross'. Brangwyn was commissioned to paint a set of Stations for Arras Cathedral which he worked on in the early 1920s. He also went on to produce two series in print (lithograph and woodcut) and several painted series.

This drawing has been identified by Brangwyn scholar Libby Horner as a study for the Stations painted by Brangwyn for the chapel of a leper mission at Westfort near Pretoria, South Africa, between 1920-22. Father Thomas Ryan funded the building of a church at the site and appealed to artists to donate one panel each but Brangwyn offered to produce the whole set himself. Brangwyn wrote that he 'had tried to treat the fourteen episodes of the Passion as if they were happening today, among modern people. The conventional idea of Christ is not mine. I have tried, from many models, to evolve a leader of men. I have used a form of costume that might belong to any period of history and I would like my Stations of the Cross to be of any time and for all time'. Horner suggests that the South African 'Stations' were probably similar to the Arras versions as Brangwyn worked on them at around the same time. The artist recalled that for the Arras project he 'made innumerable studies…full-size paintings – hundreds of sketches and cartoons' (William de Belleroche, Brangwyn's pilgrimage; the life story of an artist , London 1948, p. 122).

A similar drawing of the same subject but with a somewhat different composition - Veronica wipes the face of Jesus, 1920, also in chalks on blue paper, is in the collection of the Brugge Stedlijke Musea, Bruges, Inv. 0.953. II