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| Framed print of "The Angelus" now hanging in my living room. |
My dad's Godfather, Uncle Frank, had this print hanging in his living room over the gas fire place. When I was a wee lad (i.e., Warren Road days), my father would take me with him to visit Uncle Frank. They would talk and I would be bored-Uncle Frank (and Aunt Elizabeth) didn't have any children, so they had no toys for me to play with. So I had been "taught" to politely and obediently sit there (and be seen and not heard).
And so I quietly took in the surroundings. The living room was dominated at the one end by a brick fireplace with natural gas-fueled flames. Above the fireplace was a framed "painting" that I often pondered (because what else was there to do?). For years I assumed that the couple were praying at the grave of their dead child.* When we were young, my dad often took us to the cemeteries where we prayed for the dead relatives.
Years later, I learned that this "painting" was actually a print of a painting called "The Angelus" by the French painter, Jean-François Millet. I was too young to know the prayers but I was familiar with the Angelus church bells that rang at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. because these bells structured our days (during the time we lived on Warren Road).
After Uncle Frank died, the "painting" went from its place of honor over the fireplace to a storage space in the upstairs eave at our new suburban home on Elmhurst Drive. Apparently, it never occurred to me to question why we didn't hang it in our living room above our fireplace. But by the time we moved to Elmhurst Drive, angelus bells had fallen out of fashion and we were too far from the church to hear them anyway.
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| This is an image I found online that is more colorful and vivid. I don't know how accurate it is compared to the original painting. |
Years later when I was on my own, I took the "painting." (I don't remember if I asked or merely told or what). I don't know if I ever hung it up, perhaps early after I married Lynn. There was a time when we seemed to collect images of The Angelus (I have a smaller painted copy somewhere that I think we actually displayed).
In any case, hanging the painting was rather daunting because of the bulk of the frame and the weight. It is heavy because the back is a piece of thin wood covered with a thick heavy paper. From the various moves over the years, the frame got rather beaten up, chipped, and dirty. Periodically I considered having the print re-framed but I was afraid that there might be some hidden treasure secretly stashed behind the print and it would be stolen by the frame maker. Another option was to purchase an entirely new framed print and bury the old one behind it; but that seemed dishonest, and a betrayal. Since the divorce (2001) I had intended to hang the picture but procrastinated against acting.
Recently, I down-sized my storage unit and encountered the picture again. I decided I had to display the picture because it a core part of me (although I'm not sure what that exactly means). It is a connection to a past that no longer exists**, a piety that has been discarded and buried. So perhaps hanging it is something of a bit of rebellion on my part.
The institutional church stole my religion, my faith; Vatican 2 threw it away but I still remember it. There was something about the old ways that was structured and solid and secure. Perhaps it is merely a memory of a childhood, a dream that can't be recaptured. But whatever, the picture/painting/print is back on the wall. It is a call to pause and remember. Remember.
*While researching "The Angelus" painting, I was chagrined to learn that the abstract painter Salvador Dali also believed that the painting was originally about a couple praying at a grave. Apparently there is some evidence this could be true.
**One of the mysteries of life is that there are things we can never know. I never thought to ask about the origin of the picture, how and why Uncle Frank got it and if there was any special significance about it or it was merely a piece of religious art. Both Uncle Frank and my dad are long gone so it is unlikely that I will ever know.
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Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Angelus_%28painting%29
https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire_id/the-angelus-3048.html?no_cache=1&S=&print=1&no_cache=1&
https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/a/angelus-painting-by-millet.php
https://www.dalipaintings.com/archeological-reminiscence-millets-angelus.jsp
http://www.artinsociety.com/millet-and-the-angelus.html#
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Written Sunday 27 December 2020.
