The Stations of the Cross; From Drawings by Jean Charlot
[Berkeley Heights, New Jersey]: The Sower Press, [1935]. Stitched in original paper wrappers (5 inches tall), printed front panel, illustrated rear panel. Slight crease to lower corner A nearly-fine copy. Item #1812
THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS
The Stations of the Cross—an early work by Jean Charlot illustrated with his cartoon-style, black-and-white drawings—printed by Thomas Bary at The Sower Press. An important ephemeral title from a small American Catholic imprint. Rare.
Born in France (to a French father and Mexican mother), Jean Charlot cultivated a growing love of Mexican culture before he departed from France for good in 1921. Arriving in Mexico, Charlot encountered "my first Mexican priest, seen at landing, at Mass in the cathedral of Vera Cruz, [who] happened to be a genuine 'India verde,' and all through the Consecration I watched lovingly the nape of dark green skin between the fringes of white hair and the gold galloon of the Sunday vestments. I was at last to see alive and rooted in its own soil what I had apprehended in Paris only from fragments...For a while I would be nothing but eyes, taking in this new face of the Church" (Born Catholics). In Mexico, Charlot joined the muralist school gathered around Diego Rivera, where he developed a distinctive visual iconography infused by the spiritual traditions of his new home.
Charlot prepared 14 roundel-style miniatures (described as "line cuts after brush-and-ink drawings"), each two inches in circumference. There is no text and the final Station XIV appears on the rear wrapper. During this same period (June 1935–August 1938), Charlot painted 14 circular panels, each 3 ft wide by 3 ft high panels, which were eventually installed at St. Cyprian Church (River Grove, Illinois) in the 1950's. (jeancharlot.org)
"The Sower Press was a modest publishing house that couldn’t stay put. From East Orange to Matawan, Keyport to Scotch Plains, owner Thomas Barry moved the location of his press around the way a television pirate buries his treasure. Barry quickly gained a reputation for publishing rural Catholic literature: pamphlets, prayer cards, and books. Barry’s notable publications include The Catholic Attitude to Machinery by Douglas Marshall, An Artist’s Notebook by Sister Mary of the Compassion, O.P., tracts for The Confraternity of Saint Thomas Aquinas (a chastity youth league), and a reprint of The Sun of Justice by Harold Robbins" (The Distributist Review). See Jean Charlot in Born Catholics (F.J. Sheed, editor); See the Jean Charlot Foundation (jeancharlot.org); Distributistreview.com.
Price: $350.00