New Church Art Collection

The theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg have influenced the thinking of many great writers and artists, particularly in the 19th century. A variety of works in the New Church Art gallery clearly demonstrate this influence. Of special importance is a plaster relief sculpture titled "Deliver Us From Evil" (see photo left). It was made in about 1805 by the well-known British artist, John Flaxman (1755-1826). This depiction of two good and two evil spirits struggling for control of the human soul illustrates the New Church concept of spiritual freedom. Flaxman was the first artist to depict the deceased human soul as a full-bodied adult, an idea derived directly from Swedenborg. Along with "Thine is the Kingdom," a companion piece also in the Museum's collection, this relief was a preliminary model later executed in marble for a family tomb monument in England.

William Blake (1757-1827) was a friend of John Flaxman and another important artist whose ideas were influenced by Swedenborg. Blake was especially interested in the Swedenborgian concept of "correspondences," which asserts that all material things have their origin in a spiritual world, the natural world being a mirror of spiritual causes. Blake's work, such as his illustrations to the Book of Job (right), are filled with symbolic imagery, much of it related to ideas drawn from Swedenborg.

Hiram Powers (1805-1873) has been hailed as one of the foremost American sculptors of the nineteenth century. He was also a convinced Swedenborgian: "I am a 'New Churchman,' a 'Swedenborgian' -- a 'New Jerusalemite,' without any reservation whatever; and I wish it to be known." In a letter to the poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was also a reader of Swedenborg, Powers states that "the legitimate aim of art should be spiritual and not animal. A nude statue should be an unveiled soul." New Church doctrine holds that the natural body is merely a veil that covers the soul, or spiritual body. In his sculpture of Proserpine (see photo left), as in his other ideal sculptures, Powers was trying to reproduce a tangible image of the human soul. Each "unveiled soul" attempts to convey the very image of heaven as seen through the human form. (Proserpine is the Roman name for the Greek goddess Persephone.)

George Inness (1825-1894) was one of the most famous American landscape painters of the nineteenth century. His painting was profoundly affected by the ideas of Swedenborg from the time that he first encountered them in the mid 1860s. Like William Blake, Inness was especially interested in the New Church doctrine of correspondences, particularly as it applied to colors and numbers. He increasingly incorporated New Church ideas into his later works by means of his color choices and his rules for precise measurements in composing a picture. His aim was to depict a natural world imbued with human spirituality. As Inness describes it, "the highest art is where has been most perfectly breathed the sentiment of humanity. Rivers, streams, the rippling brook, the hill-side, the sky, clouds -- all things that we see -- can convey that sentiment if we are in the love of God and the desire of truth." The Museum's Inness landscape, titled "Morristown, N.J.," was painted in 1869.