Holy Dory

When modernity obtrudes upon religious art, pious folk usually protest. Last week a startlingly modern piece of church art was unveiled in old Chatham, Mass., on Cape Cod. Engrossed mainly with fish and summer visitors, Chatham is respectable and religious. Most people might suppose that it would have no truck with a picture of Jesus Christ, beardless, garbed in corduroys and grey shirt without even a necktie, preaching from a dory manned by two Cape Codders. Such a supposition would be in error. Deeply, reverently pleased were the Chathamites who gathered last week in Old Congregational Church, founded in 1696 by one Jonathan Vickery, fisherman. They were not the least shocked by the fisherman Christ which was unveiled in the church vestibule, nor were they embarrassed that the faces of the multitude to whom Christ was preaching were likenesses of their own.

For 20 years Artist Alice Stallknecht (Mrs. Carl Van Buren Wight) has summered in Chatham. Since her husband's retirement from a Greek professorship at Johns Hopkins she has lived there permanently. Once an art student in New York and Philadelphia, Artist Stallknecht did not take up painting seriously until last year. This year she decided to decorate Old Congregational Church. In five weeks she turned out a mural 9 ft. by 20 ft. in three panels. Her Christ is tall, slight, blue-eyed, dark-haired, aged about 30. The face is an idealized combination of many Cape Cod fisherfolk. On either side of Christ's dory are His 27 listeners, who posed first in a group, then separately in Artist Stallknecht's studio. At the oars of the dory are two fishermen, deacons in the church. Prominently featured are Grocer L. Sidney Atwood, president of the church association, Insurance Man Augustus Bearse, vice president, and Restaurant Keeper Mrs. Emma Howes, clerk. Others: the Chatham electrician, auto dealer, carpenter, landscape gardener and their wives & children, some of them descendants of founders of Old Congregational Church.

Critics found Artist Stallknecht's mural raw, bold, naive, much like the works she exhibited in Manhattan's Ferargil galleries last May. Critics also recalled that modernized divinities are nothing new; Jacob Epstein's Christ was much discussed for his negroid appearance. Nor are real faces in religious pictures rare; many an Italian and Flemish noble and magnifico got himself and his offspring into a "Holy Family."

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