The Pool of Bethesda by Robert Bateman (1842–1922). 1877. Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 73.7 cm. Yale Center for British Art B1981.25.36. Acquired from the Paul Mellon Collection.
Bateman exhibited this work at the Royal Academy in 1876, no. 30, and it is now considered one of his most important works. This religious subject is taken from the gospel of St. John 5: 2-4.
Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
The painting has obviously been influenced by Italian quattrocento painters such as Piero della Francesca and Andrea Mantegna. John Christian has noted that “such an awareness of Piero was rare at this date, and although all the influences can be paralleled in Burne-Jones, Taylor rightly observed that Bateman makes a highly personal use of them, treating a scene of suffering in terms of a restrained geometric design and a cool, almost monochromatic colour scheme to create a sense of ‘withdrawn emotionalism’ which is subtly disturbing. It is a further sign of his originality that he chooses to represent the moment when the angel is about to ‘trouble the waters’, rather than the more usual subject of Jesus healing a man who ‘had an infirmity thirty and eight years’, which follows in the gospel text” (85).
The Painting’s Critical Reception
The painting was widely reviewed when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1876, The critic of The Academy remarked upon its debt to the Old Masters:
Mr. Bateman‘s treatment is as different from this as possible, a curious piece of Mantegna-like revivalism - in truth, more ‘Preraphaelite’ than any of the known so-called Preraphaelite styles, whether the earlier German or the later English movement. In Mr. Bateman‘s picture the style is still and abstract, the contours and colour very precise, the latter being grey, pale, and veiled. Here the pool is represented as enclosed in a quaintly-constructed architectural screen; an angel, the principal figure, descends the steps on the left towards the water, holding a serpent-wreathed cross; two infirm men are close to the pool, along with a Roman soldier, the superintendent of the sanatorium, standing under a narrow tiled shed-roof; beside him appears an open door, through which is seen the often-disappointed disabled man, trying to crawl towards the water, but always too late for the moment of miracle. Nothing is introduced to show the approach of Christ, who is at last to give him the reward of his long expectation. The artistic point of view in this picture is no doubt outré; yet calm, deliberate, its suggestions lead seriously to heart, and worked out unfalteringly. [441]
F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum lamented Bateman’s adaptation of the style of fifteenth-century Florentine painter:
Mr. R. Bateman’s Pool of Bethesda (30), the angel going down to the water, exhibits affectations which, perforce, we enjoy in the pictures of the Mantegnesque and Middle Florentine schools. Such vagaries are, notwithstanding his picture’s very considerable merit, sure to bring a clever painter of our time into contempt. It is mere boyish folly, or something worse, to employ one’s studies in the way here shown. The technical absurdities of the older painters, mere affectations as they were, quite unjustified by the state of artistic knowledge even in the middle of the fifteenth century, have been compounded for long ago, and, simply because we cannot have ancient art without them, we scarcely recognize their ridiculousness. But we really should like to see what Mr. Bateman can do apart from these follies of his. There are certainly poetic qualities shown in the design; the figure of the angel has some grace, but the other figures are very queer. [670]
The critic of The Saturday Review thought the inspiration for this work was more German engravings by the Nazarenes than the Florentine Old Masters:
The identical subject has been treated in quite an opposite spirit by Mr. Robert Bateman (30); here we have not only the Pool, not only the awaiting sick, but a full-winged angel, stepping down marble stairs to move the waters. The suspicion will be that the artist has looked over-much at German engravings from Düsseldorf, though we do not happen to recall among them this special subject. The lack of colour and decisive chiaroscuro would also tend to the same conclusion. The painter has, however, well thought out his subject, and the execution, without ostentation, serves simply to give expression to the idea. [585]
Bibliography
“The Royal Academy. The Academy IX (May 6, 1876): 441-42.
Christian, John: The Last Romantics, London: Lund Humphries, 1989, cat. 26, 85.
“The Royal Academy.” The Saturday Review XLI (May 6, 1876): 584-85.
Stephens, Frederic George. “Fine arts. The Royal Academy.” The Athenaeum No. 2533 (May 13, 1876): 669-72.
Taylor, Basil. “A Forgotten Pre-Raphaelite”: Robert Bateman’s ‘Pool of Bethesda.’ Apollo Supplement (August 1966): 3-4.
Last modified 20 July 2021