The Communion, 1865. Oil on canvas, 35 x 30 inches (88.9 × 76.2 cm). Collection of the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow.
This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867, no. 612. It features an elderly priest administering communion to a young man dressed in black and watched over by two Dominican monks in the background. The painting has been widely discussed by Liz Prettejohn in her brilliant groundbreaking article on Legros:
A dozen figures, kneeling or standing, face to the left. A priest and an acolyte stand above them, and face to the right to administer communion over a curving rail dressed with snow-white linen. This area of light masses contrasts abruptly with the shadowy depths of surrounding space, stone-built and quite plain, although it is difficult to be certain exactly which part of the church we are seeing. Things are clearer in the etching of 1861 on which the painting appears to be based, and the title of the etching names the church: Saint-Médard on the left bank of the Seine, in a part of Paris much frequented by the artist, Alphonse Legros (1837–1911), before his move to London in 1863. It is easy to suppose that this is a scene he witnessed himself, a slice of religious life in modern Paris.
Perhaps, then, the painting may be considered a distilled memory of the scene, painted later in London, and tinged with nostalgia for a French religious practice now growing distant, from the artist's point of view, in time and place. Compared to the etching, the painting appears aestheticized: the homely bonnet of the principal female figure has vanished, and the nearer woman's shapeless garments have marshalled their folds, coming to resemble Venetian damasks and silks; the stocky candlestick-bearer with Dominican cape and tonsure has become a beautiful boy with an elegantly long taper; the patterned-and-fringed green rug eases the rigours of kneeling on stone just as it adds richness of colour. One might surmise that the setting has been generalized, its French Catholic appurtenances muted, to make the scene more palatable to an English Protestant audience. La Communion dans l'église Saint-Médard, the title of the etching, is translated into English as The Communion, the painting's title at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1867. The translation is in keeping with Legros's practice in the first six years of his residence in London, when he gave English titles to his Royal Academy exhibits; but it also simplifies and abstracts the subject matter. Is that simply because an English audience might have no particular interest in customs at the church of Saint-Médard? The scene has been universalized, and certainly made more beautiful; one might say ‘aestheticized’ in the strict sense that it engages with artistic concerns shared by the English artists of the emerging aesthetic movement. Despite greater sobriety of colour, it inhabits something like the same world as Simeon Solomon's priestly figures of similar date, as in a watercolour of 1870, The Mystery of Faith. The changes from etching to painting also move the scene away from Parisian modernity towards timelessness, and the colouring seems redolent of the Old Masters – echoes of Zurbarán and Velázquez, perhaps, but with a saturation and density that recall Holbein, and some Venetian touches. In the art history of the later twentieth century this apparent retreat from modernity signified, almost automatically, a loss of vigour or grit, a dereliction of avant-garde duty.
And yet in another sense the painting is more challenging than the etching. The etching is easy enough to grasp as an ethnographic study of a contemporary religious practice, one that is interesting as a feature of the society in which it occurs, but in which a secular viewer need have no further investment. By contrast, the painting might seem compromised by some sort of attraction to ‘the mystery of faith’ (to borrow Solomon's expression). If you are the kind of person who feels uncomfortable with heartfelt devotion or with the Christian sacraments, you will find this painting challenging to look at, and that may well have been the case for many of its viewers at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1867. In other words: this could be interpreted as quite an oppositional picture in its English context of 1867 – as oppositional in its own way as Édouard Manet's Anges au tombeau du Christ was in its French context of 1864, a painting with which it shares an extreme tonal contrast between snow-white linen and shadowy blacks. The Communion: the title declines to specify a religious denomination, and communion is a sacrament in both Protestant and Roman Catholic churches – also one around which there were perturbations at this date in both Anglican and French Catholic contexts. [79-81]
The work was reviewed favourably when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867. F. G. Stephens found it a powerful work: “Another painter of great ability may be introduced here, in the person of Mr. Legros, whose picture, The Communion (612), although wrought in his customary low tones, and flat, defective modelling, is very sombre, powerful and expressive” (667). The Art Journal stated: “A. Legros has scarcely redeemed his promise. Powerful he always is, but seldom pleasing. ‘The Communion’ (612) has been hung high, and indeed such works are best seen at a distance. The subject, which especially sacred, seems treated after the rude matter of the Italian and Spanish naturalisti” (138).
Bibliography
“The Royal Academy.” The Art Journal New Series VI (June 1, 1867): 137-46.Prettejohn, Elizabeth. “The Scandal of M. Alphonse Legros.” Art History XLIV (January 16, 2021): 78-107.
Stephens, Frederic George. “Fine Arts. Royal Academy.” The Athenaeum No. 2064 (May 18, 1867): 666-67.
La Communion dans l’eglise St.-Medard [Communion in the Church of Saint Medard]. Etching with aquatint. Plate size 143/8 × 1011/16 inches (36.5 × 27.1 cm). Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, accession no. 1952.10.18.Last modified 13 November 2022