IAP Fine Art is delighted to announce that the Chris Gollon Estate has agreed a long term loan of ‘Virgin & Child’ by Chris Gollon to Guildford Cathedral.
Re-installation of the 8ft x 6ft painting ‘Virgin & Child’ by Chris Gollon in Guildford Cathedral took place just before Christmas Day 2025, and this large canvas will remain in the Cathedral for the foreseeable future. It was originally painted for Guildford in 2013, as part of the first stage of Chris Gollon’s national touring exhibition to English Cathedrals ‘Incarnation, Mary and Women from the Bible’. After a 12-year absence, and being exhibited in the cathedrals of Norwich, Chichester, Durham and Hereford, the painting returns home to its original location, in Chris Gollon’s home county of Surrey.
‘Virgin and Child’ is the largest single canvas Chris Gollon painted. Excerpt from a text by Chris about the painting’s composition:
“In the past, even great artists thought nothing of borrowing a composition or design from
an earlier master. This tradition continued even as late as Manet, who borrowed his
composition for ‘Dejeuner sur L’Herbe’ from Raphael.
Nowadays, I expect this habit would be considered as plagiarism. It still goes on of course,
but artists take great pains to cover their tracks: as though they were doing something
wrong.
In the time of Rembrandt, neither he nor anybody else saw any reason for not adopting a
great composition resolved by another artist. This was the procedure I decided on for my
painting ‘Virgin & Child’ on display here in the cathedral.
As so often happens, I was looking for something else when I chanced upon an etching by
Rembrandt entitled ‘The Virgin & Child’. Rembrandt had borrowed his design from a tiny
engraving in ‘The Precious Book of Andrea Mantegna’.*
Neither artist made a painting from their studies, so far as I know, and my work is one such
attempt.” Chris Gollon (2015)
*Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) it is said was familiar with the earlier and equally tender Byzantine
iconography known as ‘Eleousa’ or ‘Our Lady of Tenderness’.