ABSTRACT

This chapter considers two artists, Eric Gill and David Jones, whose approach to art, as well as to life, was decisively motivated and shaped by their Roman Catholic faith. They occupy a special place in twentieth-century art, if it is considered from the standpoint of consciously Christian artists who thought deeply about what it was they were trying to do. Gill moved to Ditchling in 1907 and after the end of World War I founded a Catholic artistic community, the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic. The name is significant. Joseph was a carpenter, and Gill highly prized the basic skills of making. St Dominic was the founder of the Dominican Order, whose vocation includes intellectual work. This work with woodcuts developed into some highly skilled and evocative engravings both for The Book of Jonah and to illustrate Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.