CovSoc member and Chairman of the Friends of Coventry Cathedral, Martin Williams, contemplates the image of St. Michael wrestling with the Devil in the Sutherland tapestry. Martin writes….
St Michael wrestles with the Devil in Graham Sutherland’s design for the Cathedral’s tapestry. They form a minor cameo alongside the figure of Christ in Glory.
It has been suggested that Graham Sutherland probably drew his inspiration for these wrestling figures from the pioneering photographic work of Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904). In the late 19th century Muybridge was inspired by early British photographers to invent special techniques that made motion sequences visible through the use of multiple snapshots.
Born in Kingston upon Thames, Muybridge emigrated to the USA as a young man and it was there that his most groundbreaking work was achieved. His motion photo sequences revealed secrets that had previously been hidden from the human eye.
In 1883 the University of Pennsylvania supported his motion studies in the course of which he took some 100,000 action photos of subjects that included galloping horses, men wrestling, elephants walking and a nude ballet dancer. His work was widely published and his books Animals In Motion (1899) and The Human Figure In Motion (1901) created a visual compendium of human movements that is said to have inspired artists such as Edgar Degas, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Bacon.
With that in mind, I reproduce some of Muybridge’s pictures of wrestlers for you to compare with Graham Sutherland’s tapestry design.
This article first appeared in the September 2023 edition of the Chairman’s E News.