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Derwent Wood depicts the head of the repentant robber at the scene of the Crucifixion with extraordinary intensity. This is the man who had rebuked his more obdurate fellow-criminal for railing at Jesus, pointing out that they had both earned their punishments; he had then asked Jesus to remember him in heaven. Jesus consoled him with the promise, "Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23, 43). Not only does Wood let the man's harrowed face express his final anguish, but he also suggests, through the man's slack mouth, his release from torment. Part of the sculpture's power comes from the heaviness of the features, showing the ravages of age as well as pain. This sets it apart from centuries of religious art showing Jesus's face on the cross. What Wood reveals is the suffering of ordinary sinful humanity, a condition nevertheless not without hope of redemption. Another good example of New Sculpture realism in the same gallery is Onslow Ford's bowed head of an Irish Peasant Woman (1881); but Wood goes much further than Ford here. The piece is very different from Wood's own earlier, finely modulated Fiammetta, also in the Lady Lever Art Gallery. It has aptly been described as "closer to the work of Rodin than anything else Wood exhibited during this period" ("The Penitent Thief").

Bibliography

"The Penintent Thief," 1918 (Liverpool Museums Site). Viewed 15 July 2009.

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Last modified 15 July 2009