Chances are, if you live any where in the world, you’ve seen a picture of Jesus at some point in your life. If you live specifically in the US, there’s a high chance that you’ve seen one particular image of Jesus. The artistic depictions of the religious figure created by artist Warner Sallman have been replicated thousands of times and have become a mainstay of modern depictions of Jesus. He was a technically versatile artist, known for many art styles including portraits and landscapes, and many mediums including chalk, paint and pastels but had one particular subject that he preferred to depict.
One reporter for Chicago Tonight introduces a story on Sallman:
“Whether or not you celebrate (Christmas), no doubt you have seen an image of Christ. In fact some of the depictions most familiar to Americans were created right here in Chicago”
It was in 1924 when Warner created head of christ in a rather untraditional way! He was painting an image for the February issue of a religious youth magazine when he dosed off.
I know that feeling all too well Warner…
During his impromptu nap, the image appeared to him in a dream. When he woke up, he drew what he’d dreamt in charcoal, and titled the work “Son of Man”. Sallman then later created an oil painting with a white background of the same image.
A while later in 1940 Sallman made his most famous version of the work, which was very similar but with Christ illuminated in front of a brown background titled “Head of Christ”.
Leroy Carlson, the Warner Sallman Collection Founder states that-
“The Head of Christ became an icon and known as the American Jesus”
So popular was this image with Americans at the time that the US Army even supplied its soldiers with cards bearing the image.
However, this imagery was not without controversy…
As the reporter of the story comments:
“In spite of the popularity of the image, there was criticism from art critics, clergy and cultural historians”
Paul Ericksen of Wheaton College elaborates:
“Sallman has been criticised for painting a Jesus that is passive, he’s been criticized that maybe his Jesus is too caucasian, but Sallman was a Swedish commercial artist living in Chicago and he painted a Jesus that is close at hand and can be related to”
Joan Taylor of King’s College London, writer of this article for the BBC investigating what an honest depiction of Jesus would look like, comments “Whatever some artists may imagine … Jesus is unlikely to have had blue eyes”.
This is contrary to Sallman’s depictions.
Leroy Carlson does acknowledge that Sallman’s paintings do require a degree of suspension of disbelief:
“Even today we would not say it’s normative, but it is one image that Mr. Sallman came up with, but it was meaningful to people. Amidst the vicissitudes and the heartaches of life, you know, this became their Jesus.”
Watch the full video below to see the story of Sallman’s paintings.
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