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Click here to see a photograph of the mural (large image so slow to load) The mural which fills the east wall of St. Alban's, Holborn, with colour and vitality was conceived by painter and sculptor Hans Feibusch early In 1966. Although measuring 29 ft. by 50 ft. (8.8 m by 15.2 m) and containing more than fifty principal figures it was executed, with assistance from Mrs. Phyllis Bray, in only three months. Remaining the artist's loftiest work, it suggests the use of pastel, but the medium is in fact oil, the pigments having been created especially for Dr. Feibusch by Winsor and Newton. At the focus of the picture, in a blaze of luminous colour, the figure of Our Lord advances with outstretched arms, His face filled with compassion and suffering. Enthroned above, amidst groups of adoring angels, God the Father looks down upon us and raises his hands in a powerful gesture of creation and benediction. The Third Person of the Trinity has adopted the guise of a young man with a dove, who descends upon the Apostles, bearing the flames of the Spirit. At the right hand of The Lord, the Blessed Virgin stands, head inclined towards her Son. She is accompanied by St. Mary Magdalen, the penitent, and by St. Peter, who holds the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Beneath them, cripples and beggars pray for relief, their twisted postures emphasised by the upright stances of the clergy assembled below. Father Mackonochie, the first incumbent of St. Alban's and a pioneer in bringing Anglo-Catholicism to the slum dwellers of Victorian London, is shown wearing green vestments, while to the right Father Stanton stands with arms raised directly above Canon Mortlock. The fourth figure, although intended to represent all the clergy who have worked in St. Alban's, bears the features of the Vicar at the time of painting, Father Peter Priest. In the far distance crowds of worshippers are indistinctly seen, whilst at the bottom left of the picture three more individuals in passionate prayer are attended by two guardian spirits. Occupying the opposite corner a rocky, barred enclosure represents the prison of the soul inhabited by those who have chosen to separate themselves from the Divine Love. Their empty hopelessness contrasts poignantly with the confident expectancy of the uniformed St. Alban as he gazes up at his Saviour. By his side is the priest Amphibalus, for rescuing whom St. Alban was put to death, the first British martyr. Although these identities have been suggested for the figures which presented themselves to the artist in the course of composition, the picture was not intended simply as a static assembly of well known characters, but should rather be regarded, in the words of the artist, 'as a continuous upward-flowing stream of anonymous worshippers'. Stephen Cartwright |
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Copyright © 2007
S. Alban the Martyr, Holborn
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