Duncan Grant (British, 1885-1978)


The Garden of Gethsemane oil on board43.3 x 61.3 cm. (17 x 24 1/8 in.)Painted circa 1970-1
|ProvenanceSale; Christie's, London, 7 March 1983, lot 115Sale; Christie's, London, 7 November 1985, as Christ and the three Apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane, lot 166aPrivate Collection, U.K.LiteratureE. Lucie-Smith and F. de Louville, The Male Nude; The Modern View, Phaidon Press Ltd., 1985, p.36 (coll.ill.)The design of this painting is based on two paintings in the National Gallery, London, by Giovanni Bellini and Andrea Mantegna of 'The Agony in the Garden', showing Christ praying on the eve of the Crucifixion, while his disciples Peter, James and John were asleep. Grant has changed the emphasis, so that the disciples are the principal focus. They are naked, and although asleep seem to have strikingly homo-erotic poses, as if held still while making love.Grant twice painted subjects from the Passion of Christ for commissions from churches, for Berwick, East Sussex in 1941 and for Lincoln Cathedral in 1954-8. Neither of these included the Garden of Gethsemane, although this took place only the day before those subjects. In both church and cathedral the depiction is again homo-erotic, particularly at Lincoln which includes a scene of dockworkers loading ships.This painting thus combines references to the Old Masters. The details that surround the figures are painted sketchily, with undergrowth and rocks also looking like parts of the body, as if the dreamers were enfolding this tragic but essential scene into the appearance of nature.We are grateful to Richard Shone for his assistance with cataloguing this lot and to David Fraser Jenkins for compiling the catalogue entry.