Frank Brangwyn: Stations of the Cross

This publication - which has been made possible entirely through the generosity of Tigger Hoare - was prompted by the discovery of a complete set of Brangwyn's Stations of the Cross, painted in oil, which originally hung in St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough. The participation of the Diocese of London has added a dimension which Brangwyn himself would have relished. Although brought up a Catholic, his faith was a strong belief in Christian values rather than an adherence to one particular creed and he told a friend that 'Life here is nothing without God. The time comes when one has to leave it all, then one says to oneself what can I say I have done to please Him?'

A giant of twentieth century art, admired by luminaries such as Kandinsky, Klimt, Toulouse-Lautrec, Tiffany and Bonnard, Brangwyn remains today a figure who has never managed to reclaim the space which for the first half of the twentieth century he largely occupied on the International stage. There are many reasons why Brangwyn remains out of vogue today - he was a maverick and he was prolific and his work refuses to be easily categorized. The heightened drama and saturated palette which defines most of his work are qualities that are especially evident in the Stations. Pushed to their emotional breaking point, the compositions seem barely contained within their one meter format and demand from the viewer some kind of participation.

It is telling that in so many of these Stations Brangwyn included his own portrait, not as one of the fainting spectators on the side lines, but as a main participant at the center of this drama (see front cover). Brangwyn's contribution to the revival of religious art during the interwar years is a subject that deserves reassessment.