Peace
By my bed hangs a heavy wooden frame cradling a small, drab, sepia, mildewed, corny tableau. A group of assorted beasts cluster around a chubby dishevelled barefoot child wielding a palm frond. The dominant character is a large benign lion. A wolf, a snoozing leopard, and a hint of bear complete a line-up of quintessential predators apparently devoid of ill intent. Their potential prey - a couple of calves, a lamb, and the tubby Jesus - share their bland expressions. Perhaps they are all stuffed. There are distant smouldering ruins, and a man sitting in a field where an angel is about to pounce on him.
My inner child’s eye still sees this picture as a source of blind unconditional and eternal comfort, far beyond the influence of my cynically critical adult eye.
From 1913, this same picture hung in my father's sparse and dingy childhood bedroom. It reappeared over my cot, and continued to hang about with the acquired invisibility of familiarity, wherever I have lived.
When my father was dying in London, there were many long solitary leaden-hearted journeys. I usually snatched respite at Abergavenny, safe in the bosom of Wales before or after the hell of the M4 dragon. On one particularly gruelling return journey, I broke this pattern. Keen to get home, I had accidentally overshot my habitual pullover and soon found myself desperate in Brecon. The town was hectic, but I spotted a small sign for The Cathedral, of which I had never been aware. Here I found my practical comfort break combined with unexpected solace. With an enduring passion for sacred buildings, I was eager for a quick exploration. However, within a few steps I found it somehow coldly lacking for my current mood, and turned to leave. At this precise moment, a shaft of late sunlight fell across me from a small side chapel and enticed me in.
Awaiting me was the last thing I ever expected to find in a cathedral - an original framed oil painting, above a small candlelit altar. Larger than life, in full and vibrant colour, a rosy dawn crept over distant blue mountains, cheery pink flowers sprung from lush foliage, a golden mane tumbled around a familiar kindly old face, and the child's nightie sported a jaunty blue trim. I don't know how long I sat there, but I silently shed what felt like a lifetime's backlog of high octane tears.
When I finally stumbled away, I noticed the small cathedral shop on the point of closing. Did they by any chance know where I could get a colour copy of Peace? Sensing the desperado behind my request, the woman relinquished her key-jangling impatience, and invited me in as she rummaged in a corner, returning with three postcards - the last in stock.
One for me, one for my son. My father died some weeks later, with the third glowing at his bedside.
'Peace' was painted in 1896 by William Strutt, and soon afterwards, a sepia print would be reproduced in the millions. It has been said that “perhaps no other work of art ever captured so large a number of people, of all sorts & sizes, of every nation & religion.”
