Roman Pilgrims

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Artist: John Frederick Lewis (British, 1805–1876)
Medium: Watercolor, gouache, gum and graphite on thick, moderately textured, cream wove paper mounted on board
Size: Sheet: 21 7/8 × 30 1/8 inches (55.6 × 76.5 cm)
Museum: Yale Center for British Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

John Frederick Lewis traveled throughout Europe before spending the 1840s in Cairo. Returning to Britain in 1851, he exhibited dazzlingly detailed drawings such as this, which one critic called “the ne plus ultra of finish in watercolour art.” His subjects were far removed from Victorian Britain, usually scenes from Catholic Europe or the Muslim Near East (several of his orientalist paintings are shown nearby). Here, a shepherd from Abruzzo has come on pilgrimage to a Roman church and kneels devoutly with his tired wife and distracted children.

Lewis represents Catholic devotions as essentially picturesque, reflecting the Protestant prejudice that Catholicism was suited only to the poor and uneducated. This subject betrays Victorian anxieties. In 1850, Pope Pius IX had restored Catholic bishops to England and Wales, an act greeted with indignation and anxiety by Protestants, especially when the brilliant Catholic convert John Henry Newman predicted boldly a “Second Spring” for Catholicism in England in 1851.

Text: Yale Center for British Art.