Herbert Gustave Schmalz

(British, 1856-1935)

The Return from Calvary

Footnotes

The present lot is a larger version of the work, painted in 1891, which was sold in these rooms, 25 January 2012, lot 54. The subject was engraved and published in 1906 by Louis Wolff & Co, London.

Herbert Gustave Schmalz was born near Newcastle in 1856 to a German father. Schmalz's art training was fairly conventional. At the age of 17 he moved to London where he enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools at the same time as Sir Frank Dicksee, Stanhope Forbes and Arthur Hacker. At that time many artists undertook further training abroad and Schmalz duly completed his education in Antwerp. The Academie in Antwerp combined elements of French, German and Flemish schools and introduced British artists to the broader currents in European painting.

On his return to London Schmalz established a reputation as a painter of classical, literary and historical subjects, but time spent in Jerusalem in 1890, proved invaluable in his treatment of New Testament subjects. Schmalz's early work is Pre-Raphaelite in style, but as he matured, his work developed into a more Neo-Classical style with an emphasis on brooding light and atmosphere and proved popular with the public through reproductions in magazines and prints.

The present work is one of the artist's most powerful Biblical images. In the foreground can be seen the distraught figure of the Virgin Mary, with St John and Mary Magdalene. Beyond them two more women can be seen, one of them looking back at the city of Jerusalem with Mount Golgotha in the far distance. The whole scene is overshadowed by dark storm clouds, but there is a light breaking through symbolic of events to come.

The critic George Moore wrote: 'That Mr Schmalz's picture is capable of exercising a profound effect on the uneducated mind there can be no doubt. While I was there, a lady walked with stately tread into the next room, and seeing there nothing more exciting than rural scenes drawn in water-colour, exclaimed, "Trees, mere trees! what are trees after having had one's soul elevated?"

Schmalz enjoyed considerable success during his lifetime and was great friends with Frederic, Lord Leighton PRA, who along with Holman Hunt and Val Prinsep was a neighbour in Addison Road, Kensington.

In 1900 Schmalz had a one-man show at The Fine Art Society where he exhibited 40 works and a book illustrating many of his works was published in 1911. He died in 1935.