'Zacchaeus' pre-1933 Pen and wash heightened with white on paper Signed 'E.Dunbar' Private collection
I ought to preface 'Zacchaeus' and its fascinating back story by putting CONJECTURE ALERT at the head: what follows is the piecing together of several sometimes quite disparate elements in the hope of composing a convincing narrative. Alas, some of what follows is guesswork - informed guesswork, I hope, but still more conjecture than good scholarship has houseroom for. If any reader knows better or has information to add to the following reconstruction, please leave a comment. I'd be very grateful!
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In about 1922, when Evelyn was in her mid-teens, she seems to have considered illustrating a series of Bible stories in pen and ink, and in contemporary dress. What her purpose was we don't know, but we can maybe assume some project connected with the Christian Science community in Rochester of which her family (apart from her father William) were committed members. Biblical illustration was something that drove her throughout her life: her final completed painting was Jacob's Dream, on her easel in her studio when she died in May 1960. One such early drawing was Martha, Mary and Lazarus:
Martha, Mary and Lazarus 1922 Pen and wash on paper NS Image ©Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Evelyn has gone to St Luke' gospel, chapter 10, for his account of Jesus' visit to the house where the siblings Lazarus, Martha and their young sister Mary lived. Lazarus doesn't appear in Evelyn's picture: the man on the left is Jesus; sitting on a plaid rug opposite him, enraptured by his discourse, is Mary, who has some resemblance to the teenage Evelyn; in the background is Martha, peeling apples or potatoes in a posture reminiscent of Evelyn's mother Florence that we've seen elsewhere. Jesus has taken his boots off, a standard practice in Islam, one which the Koran shares with the Old Testament, denoting that the place where he is and the context of his teaching is sacred. How much Evelyn knew of Stanley Spencer's casting of scriptural subjects in modern dress and surroundings we don't know, but for Evelyn to do so, in the context of her own home, and possibly including herself, is surely an equally powerful vector.
In 1957, towards the end of her life, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford asked Evelyn, who had been teaching part-time in Oxford for some years, for some samples of her work. She chose to donate a couple of family pencil portraits and Martha, Mary and Lazarus. It may be noteworthy that Evelyn didn't sign it.
Was Martha, Mary and Lazarus the only Biblical pen-and-ink illustration in the series?
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In the final months of Evelyn's postgraduate year at the Royal College of Art Evelyn volunteered to join a small team of recent graduates to decorate the hall at Brockley School for Boys in south-east London. She did so at the invitation of her mural tutor, Charles Mahoney. It was a big project, and the work lasted, largely uninterrupted, for a little under three years, April 1933 to February 1936. As the project neared its end, by which time Evelyn and Mahoney had become lovers, she looked about for other projects and commissions. One result of her search was an invitation in March 1936 by Athole Hay, Registrar at the Royal College of Art, to submit mural designs for the interior decoration of some new buildings at the University of London.
To accompany this request she was asked to submit a supporting portfolio of her work, to be delivered to Athole Hay at the Royal College of Art, and this she did. What happened to this portfolio is not known. It seems to have disappeared from the RCA. Having left the RCA three years before, Evelyn no longer had an automatic entrée there, even less after she and Mahoney separated in 1937. There's some suggestion in the Evelyn-Mahoney correspondence, now housed in the Tate Archive, that she asked him to collect it or at least enquire about it. Evelyn was concerned that it shouldn't fall into unauthorised hands. There the story dies until many years later.
It was in 2010 or thereabouts that a very fine pen and ink drawing, rather hurriedly signed 'E Dunbar' in the style she favoured in the mid-1930s, came to light in a document drawer in a piece of furniture once belonging to Eric Ravilious, who died in 1942. When his daughter Anne Ullmann told me about it she had no idea how it came to be there. Although he never taught Evelyn, Eric Ravilious had taught at the Royal College of Art throughout the years of her studentship and thereafter. Evelyn and Ravilious hardly knew each other. The likelihood, but pure conjecture, is that the pen and ink drawing had come from Evelyn's missing portfolio.
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It's an impressive piece of work, of a depth rarely achieved with pen, ink and wash, heightened with white, alive with movement and excitement. Here it is again for reference:
This, then, is another in this mini-series of images Evelyn has created in which a principal figure is looking beyond the frame. There are only 7, and one of them, number 7, is one of Evelyn's jokes; this is number 5. It's a technique Evelyn uses to evoke something of great importance happening beyond the frame. Some would say that what is happening here is of unequalled significance.
Clearly something very exciting is about to happen. A star-struck, enraptured girl - could she be the same girl as in Martha, Mary and Lazarus above? - is looking out of the frame at something so blinding, so brilliantly powerful that the girl next to her has to shield her eyes. Other people (I can count sixteen), it seems of all ages, are hurrying to see what's going on, what's happening beyond the frame, who's coming. And two, to get a better view, are climbing a tree, one by ladder and one, not an enormous person, by rope or - it isn't clear - rope ladder, slung from a much higher branch.
Could there be a clue in St Luke, chapter 19? Has Evelyn transported her imagination to 1st Century AD Jericho, clothing her scene in modern dress?
And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. And behold, there was a man called Zacchaeus...and he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for today I must abide at thy house...
But how did this drawing come into Eric Ravilious' possession? Better not to ask, surely. A conjecture too far.
Text ©Christopher Campbell-Howes 2023. All rights reserved.
by Christopher Campbell-Howes
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448 pages, 301 illustrations. RRP £30
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