MARLOWE'S FAUST, 1931
Oil on canvas. 48 x 36in. (121.9 x 91.4cm.)
Signed and dated on the reverse.
Provenance
Sotheby’s, London, 27th June 1979, lot 123. Illustrated in
b/w in the catalogue.
Government Art Collection, Accession Number: 14649.
Exhibited
London, New English Art Club, 1931, No. 139.
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1935, No. 20.
Cheltenham, Municipal Art Gallery, 1936, No. 5.
London, Parkin Gallery, 1977, No. 6.
Literature
Ratcliffe (2007) illus. col. pl. 70.
Illustrated in colour on the Government Art Collection web site, as Scene from Marlowe’s “Dr Faustus” and dated 1933.
Faust, disillusioned by the limits of traditional fields of study, turns to the occult in the search for ultimate knowledge and the power it can bring. He sells his soul to the devil in pursuit of this knowledge.
Now owned by the British Government, perhaps it now hangs in a Government building where it serves to warn diplomats of the dangers of ill-judged pacts. The following note is based upon the information sheet published by the Government Art Collection.
The painting represents a composite of the opening of Scene V of the play. In front of the German landscape backdrop, the stage shows Faustus’s study in his house. On the wall is painted the serpent coiled around the tree of knowledge, in front of which stand his good and bad angels who appear at intervals throughout the play and vie for his soul. The good angel, dressed in white, points heavenwards and appears and disappears through the closed door marked Ego Dominus tuus (I am your Lord). Behind the bad angel, in black, the door is, by contrast, open and bearing the inscription Diabolus deus inversus (The devil is God stood on his head) leads down to the red fires of hell. The bad angel motions downwards, and together with Faustus standing in the pentagram with a wand, turning his back on the communion bread and wine, conjures up Mephistopheles. The latter appears in the guise of a Franciscan friar, Faustus having dismissed the first devil who appeared to him with the words:
Thou art too ugly to attend on me. Go and return an old Franciscan friar, that holy shape becomes a devil best.
The stunted tree of knowledge, choked by the serpent, the bare trees in the foreground (the one on the right covered in fungus and consequently diseased) and the sawn-off tree stump in the midst of the spectators all symbolise Faustus’s final damnation. As the chorus puts it: Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight.
The onlookers in the audience wear the clothing of 1931. Their lethargic poses indicate a striking indifference to the battle between good and evil confronting them, and it is perhaps not too far fetched to see the composition as a commentary on the political situation at that time in Germany with the rise of Hitler’s national socialist party.
Reference
Ratcliffe, E. Ithell Colquhoun. Mandrake, Oxford. 2007.