A Sacred Harvest by Robert Bateman (1842–1922). Watercolour and gold on paper; 41/4 x 29/16 in. (10.7 x 6.5 cm) – sight. Private collection.
Robert Bateman, as well as being a highly cultured man, was also religious with High Church tendencies. Religious works figure prominently in his oeuvre, including his masterpiece The Pool of Bethesda. Bateman also designed religious illustrations and his woodcuts appeared in publications like The Latin Year, The Church Service, and A Century of Bibles.
There was a great revival of biblical typology in the 19th century and most educated Victorians, like Bateman, would have been familiar with this concept. The members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, through their reading of John Ruskin's Modern Painters, Vol. II, became convinced of the artistic value of using typology to reconcile the demands of realistic technique with the need for spiritual truths (Landow 3-5). Whereas John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti used typological symbolism only in their early paintings, William Holman Hunt continued to employ it throughout his career.
Bateman would have been well aware of the typological symbolism found, not only in Old Master paintings, but in the works of the Pre-Raphaelites such as Millais’ Christ in the House of His Parents, Hunt’s The Shadow of Death, and Stanhope’s The Wine Press.
In this small watercolour A Sacred Harvest by Bateman the young Christ is seen harvesting grapes with his right hand while his left hand holds a sacramental chalice. The allusion to the sacrament of communion is obvious. The grapes Jesus has harvested will be turned into wine and the wine, in turn, symbolizes Christ’s blood shed to redeem the sins of mankind. Into this highly original treatment of the subject in this watercolour Bateman has again managed to suffuse some of what is characteristic of his strange idiosyncratic style.
Bibliography
Landow, George P. Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows. Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature, Art and Thought. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
Landow, George P. William Holman Hunt and Typological Symbolism. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
Last modified 17 February 2023