Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

by Russ Ramsey

His secret is ours too. It is a secret as old as time: Does my life contribute anything of value to this world? Ecclesiastes put the question to poetry: I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it.

He is the striving man from Ecclesiastes—learning firsthand about the vanity of toil under the sun while trying to live, move, breathe, and do his work under heaven. He chases after the sun and never reaches it.30 He bears the weight of a creation “subjected to futility”31 and longs for the renewal of all things.

In Vincent’s art, we sense the eternal glory blazing on the other side of the door, and through his art long to behold it as more than the wisps of smoke we see. This is why we are drawn to him. We have seen some of the fire that burned inside him.

As Annie Dillard said, one of the most important things we can do is to try to sense beauty and grace when they occur.

We stand at glory’s door because we know there is wonder on the other side. We long to see it ourselves, and we want to show it to others. Sometimes this is the artist’s work—to stand and knock on the door of glory and, whenever possible, siphon little wisps of smoke from those places...

Thanks to Vincent, you may find yourself confronted with a glory deeper than you expected. But even still, you will only be seeing a fraction of what’s actually there. You will only see a wisp of smoke. “All things are full of weariness.”

Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form. Vladimir Nabokov

Artists draw on what they know and where they come from.

Art has always been a means of shaping hearts and minds.

We are shaped by those who come before us, by those who invest in us, by those who teach us skills, by those who hand down convictions, and by those who pour love into us when we are young.

Tanner’s canvas “invites” viewers to accept, embrace, and believe in the portrayal before them, even though the surrounding visual culture and practice of their social world contradicts such knowledge, especially with regard to the abilities, skills, and intelligence of African Americans.

Tanner wanted to teach people a new way to see.

Though race would always play an important role in Tanner’s art, in order to expand people’s view of race, he didn’t want to become a niche artist focused only on race. He wanted to develop his skills in the tradition of the European masters. For this reason, he never returned to African American genre paintings.

As a man of faith, Henry believed persuading one race to regard another with equity and love was a theological endeavor, one which required a biblical view of personhood—that all people are made in the image of God and therefore share an inherent dignity and worth that transcends any human construct.

Henry wanted to invite people to see something new in those familiar stories, to reconsider something they previously thought, and, most importantly, to have an encounter with Scripture that moved them to a deeper faith.

If only people could look beyond their imagined impressions of others, if only we could see each other as we really are and not as exaggerated stereotypes, if only a genuine curiosity about the lives of others formed our pursuit to know them, then so many of the forces that divide us would be emptied of their power. We would see the common human experiences of joy and sorrow, love and loss, struggle and victory in those around us, and we would count it all sacred. Understanding would replace ignorance. Respect would overcome resistance.

As a painter of biblical scenes, Tanner didn’t just want people to see Scripture; he wanted to show it to them.

Henry Tanner wanted to “preach with his brush.”25 He believed painters should “convey to your public the relevance and elevation these subjects impart to you, which is the primary cause of their choice.”26 In other words, he wanted Scripture to stir the souls of others in the way it stirred his.

Showing people biblical truth would be the way he would push back against prejudice. This would be how he would proclaim the gospel.

Mary was an ordinary girl when she was betrothed to a craftsman named Joseph. They lived in Nazareth. They were simple, honest people, working toward becoming a family. But all this was interrupted in a moment when the angel of the Lord appeared to Mary and told her something that would alter the course of history.

Mary belonged to a people familiar with the word of God. She grew up under its teachings about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, and the prophetic foretelling of God’s promised Messiah—the one sent from God who would deliver his people from suffering and sin.

Perhaps it was even stranger for Mary to discover that God had formed an impression of her.

Gabriel wasn’t just telling Mary that God was aware of human affairs, but that he was personally involved in them. Mary’s son would come into the world with the task to redeem it.

The angel explained that the laws of nature are amendable by the One who wrote them. The Holy Spirit would overshadow her, and when he pulled that shadow back, this virgin would become the mother to her Lord. How this would happen was incidental to the fact that it would. And God would be the one to do it.

My primary vocation is ministry. I am a pastor who teaches the Bible. I discovered in Henry Tanner a painter who created some of the most moving biblical genre paintings I have ever seen, yet I felt myself wishing he had chosen other subjects—specifically Black subjects. Why? I wrestle with this question in my own heart. The tension I feel, and what I’ve tried to capture in telling his story, is that the reason Tanner stopped painting Black genre paintings and switched to biblical genre scenes was, in fact, largely the result of the realities of racial prejudice. Had he continued to paint the African American genre, he would have been known only as a Black painter painting Black people and would not have been taken seriously on a global scale.

I want to confess that expecting him to be a Black artist painting Black people made me complicit in the same stereotyping he worked his whole life to overcome. The fact that, instead, he offers scenes from the Scriptures I’ve given my life to teaching adds a convicting measure of irony and rebuke I have had to sit with, own, and work through.

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist . . . The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm. Edward Hopper

Everyone has a story. And no one has a simple story.

Edward, on the other hand, struggled. In the formative years of his twenties and thirties, he did not have a clear vision of who he was creatively. Though he made a living illustrating ad copy, he couldn’t sell his own work. He was the kind of artist who lived in the privacy of his own mind and preferred it that way.

Though he later rejected his Baptist upbringing and came to feel little beyond disdain for religion, those conservative principles he learned in the church when he was young—modesty and the denial of pleasure—remained with him over the course of his life.

Robert Henri, who told his students, “It isn’t the subject that counts but what you feel about it . . . Forget about art and paint pictures of what interests you in life.”

Hopper wrote, “Why I select certain subjects rather than others, I do not exactly know, unless it is that I believe them to be the best mediums for a synthesis of my inner experience.”11 Following his former teacher’s advice, he was much more concerned about rendering a feeling than a subject.

There’s a certain loneliness in Hopper’s work, but it’s a complicated loneliness. It isn’t that his characters are outcasts, destitute and unable to find community. Rather, when we see them, they are often turned inward as the world around them moves about, turned in on itself too.

James Peacock said, “In Hopper’s works, even a buzzing city doesn’t remedy isolation, but heightens it.”

It is the potential of the story, not the absence of one, that draws us to Hopper’s work because as human beings, if there’s one thing we know instinctively, it’s that there must be a story. Everything has a story. Everyone has a story. And every story is, in some way, sacred.

As Edward’s star rose, so did his ego—not so much in boasting about himself to others, but in thinking of himself above others.

Edward said, “Living with one woman is like living with two or three tigers.”

Jo was committed to her marriage. She told a friend, “Marriage is difficult, but the thing has to be gone through.”

Jo was devoted to her husband, and if that meant living in his shadow and putting up with his cruelty, she would endure.

Loneliness creates a vicious cycle. When it nurses contempt, we end up creating an even greater distance from people. We’re angry that we feel so alone, and we focus that anger on those who get close because they’re the only ones we can reach. Our anger drives them away, and we feel even more alone, which leads to an even deeper anger.

Frederick Buechner wrote, “You do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”39 When we’re caught in this cycle where the world we want—one where we’re known and loved and safe and able to grow—stays out of reach, we lash out at those people who try to help us see what’s true. We lack the capacity to see beyond our anger and pain, and, as Jesus said, we kill our own prophets.

Loneliness tells us something true. It doesn’t grow from an evil root. It comes from a God-given desire buried deep inside us all to know we’re not alone. It comes from a hunger for fulfillment, peace, and belonging, and it affirms our desire for love and acceptance. Loneliness awakens in us a passionate protest against isolation.

On the night of Edward Hopper’s death, somewhere in the city, a young usherette in a company uniform reported for work. She waited under a sconce for the third act to wind down and the house lights to come up so she could escort the people from the room and clean up after them. We do not know her name. We don’t know her hopes, dreams, fears, or loves. We don’t know who she goes home to at night, if anyone. We don’t know what’s on her mind. What we do know is that there are millions of her.

He was a man of deep faith—expressed in his philanthropic and humanitarian endeavors. He was a devoted father, seeking to instill in his children the same sense of wonder and interest he felt in the world. He encouraged their curiosity and challenged their thinking.

In 1864, tragedy struck. Alexander fell ill with a sickness he battled until he finally succumbed the following year. Lilias was twelve when her father died. She was devastated. This young woman on the verge of adolescence took on a seriousness of heart—a gravity in the form of an ever-deepening desire to know and follow God. Years later, family members recalled times when they thought Lily was off playing somewhere only to find her kneeling in her room, deep in prayer.

A flower that stops short of its flowering misses its purpose.”

When she came to believe that her gifts were not her own, she said the rudder of her life was set for the purposes of God.

Ruskin believed he could shape Lilias into one of the world’s great artists. Though many coveted Ruskin as a teacher, he coveted Lilias Trotter as a pupil.

As Lilias prayed about what to do, she remembered a time when she was young. She was in church, about to put her offering into the offering plate. Carved into the middle of the plate was the pierced hand of Christ. Seeing it, she emptied her entire purse into the dish. What else could she do? If the hand of Christ asks for what she possessed, what could she possibly withhold?

For the rest of her life, she carried in her heart the ache of not having developed her art. It was the burden many artists, athletes, musicians, and craftspeople come to know when they must set to the side what they once hoped might be their primary calling in order to pursue another path. It is a sacred, lonesome kind of sorrow—always imagining what could have been, always questioning the present, always asking whether the chosen path was the way of wisdom or folly.