“Nuns in a Narrow Alley” by Javitz
“Nuns in a Narrow Alley”
is the title of a painting on loan by Father Porter to the seminary
library. While the title of this painting is, without doubt,
intentionally humorous, and there is, indeed, something amusing about
the portrayal here of two nuns with large headdresses making there way
through a narrow alley, nonetheless, this painting is meant to be a
serious statement about a dedicated, a consecrated, Christian life.
Indeed, it could be argued this painting is a visual interpretation of
Jesus’ saying in Matthew 7.14, “narrow is the way that leads to life.”
This
painting measures 24 x 18 inches and the medium is watercolor, ink and
gouache. It bears the artist’s signature, “Javitz.” It probably dates
from the 1950’s and is most probably by an American artist who once
studied in Paris.
The two nuns depicted are readily identifiable
because of their large, starched white linen headdress as “Daughters of
Charity.” The Daughters of Charity were a congregation of Christian
women with simple vows founded in 1633 by St. Vincent de Paul and his
friend the Venerable Louise de Merillac (1591-1660). Vincent de Paul
recruited young women from the French countryside to go to Paris and
devote themselves to tending the physical and spiritual needs of poor
sick people.
At first these girls dressed so as to blend in with
the people they served, that is, they dressed as did the peasant women
in the poorest neighborhoods of Paris, a gray dress with wide sleeves
and a long gray apron with a small linen cap. But soon this religious
movement began to attract many young girls from the Ile-de-France
district just outside Paris. And they brought with them their own
distinctive headdress. The Ile-de-France (literally, “isle of France”)
district got its name not because it is literally an island, rather
because its location between four rivers suggested an island. Though
today this part of France is a heavily urbanized suburb of Paris, in
Vincent de Paul’s time, it was a rich farming area where the women wore
a large white headdress designed to shade them from the sun. This
headdress came to be employed to mark out the professed religious
character of these women from the country when in 1695 by legislation
the Daughters of Charity mandated it as the distinctive headdress of
the order.
However, there are several elements in this painting
that make it clear the scene in this painting is no historical period
piece rather it illustrates the following of this Vincentian religious
ideal in modern times. For example, the electrical street lamp is a
clear indication that this is a back alley in modern Paris. The
procession of the nuns in single file suggests their journey is not
casual, it is a well defined mission. Indeed, it is the conscientious
following of an ideal. It is a pastoral visit, a journey dictated by
their conscientious following of their religious rule. The tall stone
walls, the shuttered windows and closed doors, the empty flowerpots,
the empty baskets and birdcages all work to suggest the area of their
mission, the hard, cramped, barren life of the inhabitants of this
neighborhood. But the most intriguing suggestion of the meaning of this
painting comes from the history of modern French art. For a student of
that history would immediately recognize that stylistically and
compositionally, this painting owes something to the work of Maruice
Utrillo (1883-1955).
Utrillo, a French painter of Spanish
descent, distinguished himself as principally a painter of empty,
shuttered, melancholic Parisian streetscapes. He also employed flat
colors in black contours such as we see in this “Nuns in a Narrow
Alley.” It could be that Javitz studied in Paris for a while and was
able to see much of Utrillo’s work firsthand. But even if he was
influenced by Utrillo’s style, Javitz uses it to create another effect.
While Utrillo painted the fashionable Montmatre district, and used his
style to suggest the early hours and vapid life of Parisian society,
high society or bohemian Paris, not yet risen from its night of
revelry, Javitz uses the same techniques to suggest the cold, hard
world of Parisian back alleys, the cramped, barren lives of the poor,
the challenging mission field of such dedicated Christian women, making
it clear these dedicated Christian women, in imitation of Christ’s
solicitude for the sick and the poor, eschew the broad boulevards of
Paris to walk the narrow confines of the poor.
Notes by Rev. Lawrence B. Porter, Associate Professor, Dogmatic Theolog
