Richard Sevigny often addressed Biblical themes, as he did in this oil painting. He said he hoped to reinterpret religious stories to renew the force they’d lost over time.To say he was an armchair Biblical scholar would be an understatement. His familiarity with the Bible and his knowledge of the canonical and Gnostic gospels were as profound as his artistic ability. He was closely involved with the Congregational Church for much of his life, and later, worked for the Archdiocese of Miami, where a number of bishops befriended him.
This painting was inspired by the well-known story from Genesis, Chapter 22, in which God tests Abraham’s faith by commanding him to kill his own son.
In the painting, the “light of God” shines down on the pair from the upper left. Abraham is portrayed as old, perhaps unexpectedly so to have fathered a boy as young as the Isaac we see. The father looks up, waiting for instructions, and his face reveals a stern will to obey. Isaac is naked and vulnerable, not only to the blade, but also to viewers of the painting.
In a dose of almost surrealist minimalism, Richard left the background free of all visual clues that might have been visible at the scene. We know the episode happened outside, in the desert, but there is nothing in the painting that tells us this. Leaving the “setting” out of the work, Richard put the emphasis on the three-way relationship between God, Abraham and his son at a critical moment in Judeo-Christian history. The result is an iconic painting and one of my father’s best.
Richard frequently criticized artists who portrayed Biblical figures as White Europeans. That he gave both Abraham and Isaac Semitic facial features can be seen as an attempt at historical accuracy, but also, as a jab at the centuries-old tradition of portraying Middle Easterners as Anglos.
John Sevigny
