A friend of mine used to work with a guy who came across this picture in a textbook and fell in love with it.
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"This illustration is a seventeenth-century copy of an illumination from the Cotton Genesis, a late fifth-century Greek manuscript. In it, God extends his right hand to bless Abraham and instruct him to go to Haran. In the Bible, Abraham leaves for Haran with his father, while in the Book of Abraham, Abraham leaves and Terah later follows him. The extrabiblical traditions are somewhat divided on this point as well. In some, Abraham leaves without his father, and in others, they go together." *
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He wanted an original painted replica of the piece and asked if I would paint it for him.
I accepted the challenge not really knowing what to expect from the result since I've never attempted to duplicate anything like this before. The first challenge right off the bat was determining the size of the painting. The original is short and long and not at all a standard size. I had to choose if I was going to paint it to scale leaving large margins around the top and bottom or attempt to resize it so that it filled the full canvas.
I opted for the second choice, bought a 14"x18" canvas, cropped some of the sky off the right, added some grass to the bottom and didn't mess with the ratios of the sun and figure at all. I started with a pencil outline that I drew on the canvas and then got right to painting. Here is the finished product.
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| "God and Abraham" Replica of a Replica acrylic on canvas 14" x 18" |
Clearly, no one would ever mistake my version for the original and my painting has a slightly more cartoony feel that is consistent with my past experience, but overall, I'm very happy with it. I didn't quite capture Abraham's expression, but there comes a point in trying and retrying where you just have to declare it done even though it's not quite how you want it. Sometimes, the more you work on it the worse it gets, and the trick of a successful painting is stopping before you hit that point. The colors also turned out much more vibrant than the original painting, something that I didn't intend to have happen, but in the end, I actually like the brighter colors better.
This project was actually coordinated through my friend's, friend's wife as a gift for his birthday coming up next week. He had originally asked if I would be interested in doing this project for him over a year ago and the conversation never went anywhere. He doesn't even know that I agreed to attempt the painting in the first place and won't be expecting it at all. I'm excited for his wife to give it to him and kind of wish I could see his face when he opens it.
I hope he likes it. I do.
*John A. Tvedtnes, Briam M. Hauglid, and John Gee, Traditions about the Early Life of Abraham (Institute for the Study and Preservation for Ancient Religious Texts Brigham Young, University), p. 528.
UPDATE (5/2/13):
It wasn't until after this project was complete and delivered and I was entering the bibliography information from the original book into this blog post that I really paid attention to the names of the authors of the book. One of them, John Gee, stood out to me, but I couldn't quite place it. Through some detective work I finally figured out that he was my brother-in-law's college roommate at the best man at my sister's wedding. What are the odds? Small world!
