Schoeffer Showed Us A Large Picture, About Half Finished, In Which He
Represents The Gradual Rise Of The Soul Through The Sorrows Of Earth
To Heaven.
It consisted of figures grouped together, those nearest
earth bowed down and overwhelmed with the most crushing and hopeless
Sorrow; above them are those who are beginning to look upward, and the
sorrow in their faces is subsiding into anxious inquiry; still above
them are those who, having caught a gleam of the sources of
consolation, express in their faces a solemn calmness; and still
higher, rising in the air, figures with clasped hands, and absorbed,
upward gaze, to whose eye the mystery has been unveiled, the enigma
solved, and sorrow glorified. One among these, higher than the rest,
with a face of rapt adoration, seems entering the very gate of heaven.
He also showed us an unfinished picture of the Temptation of Christ.
Upon a clear aerial mountain top, Satan, a thunder-scarred, unearthly
figure, kneeling, points earnestly to the distant view of the kingdoms
of this world. There is a furtive and peculiar expression of eager
anxiety betrayed in his face, as if the bitterness of his own blasted
eternity could find a momentary consolation in this success. It is the
expression of a general, who has staked all his fortune on one die. Of
the figure of Jesus I could not judge, in its unfinished state.
Whether the artist will solve the problem of uniting energy with
sweetness, the Godhead with the manhood, remains to be seen.
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