Private collection, London,                                                                                                  Sotheby's New York, 18 September 2008, lot 20

New York, Aicon Gallery, Iconic Processions: Sacred Stones to Modern Masterpieces, 11  September –  20 October 2012

Nayef Homsi, Iconic Processions: Sacred Stones to Modern Masterpieces, Aicon Gallery, New York, 2012, illustrated

Good overall condition. Minor rubbing and surface accretion at upper left and lower right.
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Influenced by his devout Roman Catholic upbringing, Francis Newton Souza made regular artistic references to Christian iconography: Jesus and his disciples, the Madonna, and a litany of popes, prophets and saints frequently populate Souza’s canvases.

In the artist’s own words: “The Roman Catholic Church had a tremendous influence over me, not its dogmas but its grand architecture and the splendor of its services. The priest, dressed in richly embroidered vestments, each of his garments from the biretta to the chasuble symbolizing the accoutrement of Christ’s passion. These wooden saints painted with gold and bright colors, staring vacantly out of their niches; the smell of incense; the enormous crucifix with the impaled image of a man supposed to be the Son of God, scoured and dripping, with matted hair in plaited thorns. I would kneel and pray for hours. When the Sacristan came around with the collection plate I would drop on it, with great satisfaction, the large copper coin given me by my grandmother. I felt I had paid an installment for the salvation of my soul.” (F. N. Souza, Words and Lines, London, 1959, p.10)

Between his first solo exhibition in England in 1955 until 1963, Souza exhibited widely in London, Paris and Bombay to great acclaim. During this period of Souza’s golden reviews, journalist Guy Brett of The Guardian wrote: “… Most critics and dealers whose job it is to spot emerging talent cherish the belief that quite independent of activities of the so-called avant-garde, there are always and will be great figurative painters. Somewhere or other, they feel there must be a man, a Van Gogh, who is really painting from the bottom of his heart … F. N. Souza seems to be the perfect candidate for this category.” (A. Kurtha, Francis Newton Souza: Bridging Western and Modern Indian Art, Ahmedabad, 2006, p.41)

The present work from 1956, Christ on Palm Sunday, depicts the head of Jesus encircled by palm leaves. On the Sunday preceding his Crucifixion, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, and was received by his followers as the spiritual King of Israel and honoured with palm leaves—an ancient Roman symbol for victory—along his path. In Souza’s work, the halo of palm fronds also appears to foreshadow the crown of thorns which would later be placed on Jesus’s head during his trials and taunting by the Roman soldi🅺ers. The composition, as with many of Souza’s work from this period, is highly reminiscent of Byzantine icons. However it also bears a strong relationship to the mask-like Tribal artifacts that informed the style of high European Modernism and influenced artists such as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brancusi.

Edwin Mullins explains: “Souza's treatment of the figurative image is richly varied. Besides the violence, the eroticism and the satire, there is a religious quality about his work which is medieval in its simplicity and in its unsophisticated sense of wonder. Some of the most moving of Souza's paintings are those which convey a spirit of awe in the presence of a divine power—a god who is not a god of gentleness and love, but rather of suffering, vengeance and terrible anger. In his religious work there is a quality of fearfulness and terrible grandeur which even Rouault and Sutherland have not equaled in this century.” (E. Mullins, Francis Newton Souza, London, 1962, p. 40)