From this series of pictures we have selected some typical works with which to illustrate this article, and these will serve to show the variety and interest of the whole.
The President of the Royal Academy, Sir Edward J. Poynter, delights in rendering classic scenes and stories on his canvases, and of late years has turned his attention almost entirely to such; but twenty or so years ago he painted several religious pictures, and was one of the artists chosen by Messrs. Dalziel to illustrate their great edition of the Bible. Egypt seems especially to have fascinated him, for, in addition to the picture of "Joseph Introducing Jacob to Pharaoh," he painted another large canvas dealing with the captivity, in which crowds of Israelites are dragging a great, clumsy trolley on which is placed an enormous stone lion for the decoration of a temple. In this picture, as in the one illustrated on page 387, the artist has exhibited his love for Egyptian architecture, with its massive pillars covered with mysterious symbols. But in the latter work Sir Edward Poynter has made the human element predominant; and the simple, pathetic figure of the patriarch, leaning heavily on his staff and on the shoulder of his long-lost son, stands out in contrast with the languorous splendour of the Pharaoh.
CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF HIS PARENTS.
(By the late Sir John E. Millais, P.R.A.)
Vastly impressive and weird is Mr. Hacker's "And there was a great cry in Egypt." This artist has on more than one occasion exhibited works of a religious nature at the Royal Academy; but none better than the one before us and "The Annunciation," purchased for the Chantrey Collection, and now in the National Gallery of British Art. The picture reproduced on page 388 illustrates the passage in Exodus (xii. 30): "And there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead." It is in its suggestiveness that the picture tells: we see none of the horrors of the last plague; they are only suggested in the title. The silent, sorrowing figure of the Angel of Death, sweeping through the city with flaming sword in hand and trailing robe of black—symbol of the train of sorrow he leaves behind him—is noble and dignified. Carried along on swift wings through the deserted streets of the stricken city, the destroyer touches in each household the doomed "first-born," and only that weird, heart-breaking cry rising on the night air tells of the sorrow and misery that mark his track.
The next illustration (page 389) deals with the incident of Moses' second descent from Sinai, bearing the re-written tables of the law, and is the work of J. R. Herbert, R.A. It forms one of the series of frescoes in the House of Lords.
"Ruth and Naomi" (page 393) is one of the best of the Scriptural subjects treated by the late P. H. Calderon, R.A., and hangs in the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool. The passage illustrated is that in which Ruth makes her impassioned appeal: "Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God"; and the artist has imparted to the beautiful figure of Ruth all the intensity and passion to which the words give utterance.
