The Wounded Angel

Hugo Simberg painted The Wounded Angel between 1898 and 1903. It is a large oil painting, height 127 cm (50 inches) and width 154 cm (60 inches).

I was fascinated by Hugo Simberg’s painting, Wounded Angel. It was the illustration that accompanied Elfrieda Volk’s essay of the same name in the December 25 Adventist Review. Its impact on me was visceral and immediate, and led me reassess my assumptions about religious symbols and the human condition. Simberg refused to answer questions about the painting, but I’m interested in discovering how it “speaks” to you.

The picture is difficult to produce electronically because of the reproductions available on line and its somber colors, and so I have included details that may be difficult to see along with what is known about the setting.

In the painting, two boys, looking very solemn, walk along a deserted road by a body of water. Between them they carry a makeshift wooden stretcher on which sits an angel-girl, who has injured her wing.

The allegorical procession with the angel walks through quite a realistic landscape. It is, in fact, Eläintarha Park in Helsinki, and even today the same road skirts the shores of Eläintarha bay. In Hugo Simberg's day, the park was a popular spot for leisure-time activities among the working classes, while the gentry favoured Kaivopuisto park. At the time, many charity institutions were located in Eläintarha park; in The Wounded Angel the healthy boys are carrying the injured girl towards the Blind Girls' school and the Home for Cripples.

The boys and the angel are depicted from the side in the foreground of the painting. The boys seem to be walking slowly and heavily, and no wonder, they are carrying something precious. The younger boy, walking in the front, is dressed in black and wearing a black hat. He carries the stretcher looking straight ahead, but the boy at the back has turned his serious face towards the viewer and makes direct eye contact. He is wearing a brown jacket that is too small and black trousers. The trouser legs are tucked inside long leather boots.

The color scheme of the painting is very subdued. The light fragility of the angel-girl creates a stark contrast to the earthy, solemn figures of the boys. The angel sits on the stretcher hunched forward, head held down, and holding onto the sides of the stretcher with her hands. She is wearing a long white gown, whose hem sweeps the ground. Her feet are bare. In her right hand the angel holds a small bunch of flowers, already wilting. There is a white kerchief around her head, shading her eyes.

The painting does not reveal what has happened to the angel-girl. On closer inspection, you can see that her left wing is slightly torn at the bottom. The bright white wing has also been stained with some drops of blood.

The background for this sad procession is a quiet landscape by a body of water. The bottom of the painting consists of a dirt road, along which the boys tread, from right to left. Small tussocks of white flowers, resembling those held by the angel, grow by the roadside. The middle ground of the painting is filled by marshy meadow, pierced by a narrow stream flowing diagonally from the right into the water. By the stream there stands a delicate pale green willow. Water and an empty shore at the far side form the background of the painting. At the very top of the painting there is a narrow strip of sky.

The composition of The Wounded Angel is simple: the road in the foreground, the shore in the middle ground and the water and the opposite shore are all horizontal elements. The vertical figures of the boys, stretching nearly the whole height of the painting, and the slumped figure of the angel create the dynamics in the painting.

It's just basic science, Goldstein.

From Non Sequitur, by Wiley
(click image to enlarge)

Reviewing the Adventist Review

December 25, 2008
Vol. 185, No. 36

GENERAL COMMENTS
This issue is definitely Christmassy. Roy Adams has been awarded a Bouquet for his editorial, Tidbits From the Christmas Story. Megan Brauner’s interview of Mark Finley is disturbing. It’s as if Finley is still beating that old Revelation Seminar drum. For that, Mark has earned coal in his stocking.

I was fascinated by Hugo Simberg’s painting, Wounded Angel. It was the illustration that accompanied Elfrieda Volk’s essay of the same name. Its impact on me was visceral and immediate, and led me reassess my assumptions about religious symbols and the human condition.

COMMENTS
In “Year of Evangelism” to Span 18 Months, Mark Finley makes the following announcement: “It is true, evangelism is always the focus of the world church, but there are times when we give it special emphasis. We see this being unique in a number of ways. We will give it adequate promotion and emphasis, but also we're preparing materials for it. There'll be sermons prepared, called Revelation of Hope, and materials on the book of Daniel.” (Sounds like the same old stuff is being repackaged one more time!)

Congolese rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda, contrary to media reports, is not an Adventist minister and ”not regarded as an active member [of the Seventh-day Adventist Church]”

In Kids View, Rilla Taylor should be standing under a real puhutakawa tree. That plastic palm doesn’t do Rilla’s New Zealand postcard justice.

The Penguin's Lament

From Non Sequitur, by Wiley
(click image to enlarge)

Reviewing the Adventist Review

December 18, 2008
Vol. 185, No. 35

GENERAL COMMENTS
This is a “safe” issue in that it is primarily devotional and provides the reader with no original insights into the way we Adventists lead our lives. The cover article by Larry R. Evans, Two New Questions the Church Must Ask, was a disappointment. “Where are you in your relationship with God?” and “Where are you in your relationship with your brother?” summarize age-old questions, not new ones.

Two news articles deserve inspirational Bouquets.

Adventists’ Aid Welcomed by Mozambique’s President chronicles Adventist work in Mozambique. Literacy and fighting malaria are among the goals set for the 500,000 Mozambiquan SDA’s. “Maranatha is currently building 1,001 community centers throughout Mozambique. While Adventist congregations will use the buildings for worship on Saturdays, they will function as literacy centers, schools, and medical clinics throughout the week.” Church members “have joined other religious, government, and nongovernment groups in a coalition coordinated by ADRA” to improve health and human services.

Fear-Free Education: Adventists Aid in Human Rights Struggle, is an account of the amazing work of the Kajiado Adventist Rehabilitation and Education Center in Nairobi, Kenya. “Rajmund Dabrowski, director of communication for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, visited Kajiado and talked with the center’s director, Jacinta Loki. The interview. . .connects the center’s mission to provide fear-free Christian education with the acute need to repair basic human rights. These rights are often overshadowed by traditional Masai beliefs and practices that leave scores of Masai girls without education and force them into early marriages.”

COMMENTS
While this issue is primarily devotional, some quotes deserve attention.

Mark A. Kellner reports that Students in Adventist schools in North America] are doing above average work, but the claim that these schools “produce students who. . .[score] above their potential” seems a bit unrealistic.

Larry R. Evans provides an amazing quote by Ellen White in his cover article. “Any man, be he minister or layman, who seeks to compel or control the reason of any other man, becomes an agent of Satan, to do his work, and in the sight of the heavenly universe he bears the mark of Cain” (Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 1, p. 1087).

Bread for Bread tells the story of Peter and Suzie Ventner’s South African evangelistic campaigns in the 1930’s. This picture is worth at least 1000 words.

Introspection 2009

Modified from the comic Non Sequitur, by Wiley
(click to enlarge)

Reviewing the Adventist Review

December 11, 2008
Vol. 185, No. 34

GENERAL COMMENTS
Well I’m back from a holiday hiatus with good news about this issue. Bouquets have been awarded to: The Inbox; Bill Knott’s editorial, This Remarkable Moment; and Roy Adam’s cover feature, Atheists Going for the Jugular. The rest of this edition of the Review is standard fare—informative and worth checking out.

COMMENTS
I appreciated the articles by Mark A. Kellner and Ansel Oliver, and the timely information regarding the financial situation of the Church.

Mark Kellner’s report, Adventist North American Membership Tops 1 Million, produced a deja vous response. (Note Alexander Carpenter’s Numbers and Evangelism, Spectrum Blog, 14 November, 2008.)

“Back in 2004 the Adventist Review News reported that:
North American Division membership has passed the one million mark-1,001,872 as of October 21, 2004. According to the most recent numbers helpfully available for us lay folk through the church's adventiststatistics.org, in 2006 the NAD recorded 1,041,715 members.

“I applaud the focus on weeding out the excess on the books, but if, as the secretary states, the NAD grew at a 2% rate over the last five years (including losses) than we should be just hovering around 1,100,000. (The 2003 membership was 992,046.) Four years later, the news is that the NAD tops 1 million?

“What's missing from the most recent Annual Council report in the Adventist Review is the actual 2007 number. Why?

“Also not included in the report: the amount of money invested by the division, unions, conferences, local churches and individuals in public evangelism during 2007.”


I’ll miss Sari Fordham’s socks and the young lady herself. She has provided some memorable columns.


Martin Butler and Gladys Neigel’s Simple Church: Getting Back to Basics is evangelism that has a better chance of producing lasting results than Revelation Seminars and big city campaigns. (I wonder how Butler and Neigel would spend the 2009, $1.000,000+ cLAim evangelistic effort?)