Rouault’s Autumn ou Nazareth

I am moved by Georges Rouault’s Autumn ou Nazareth (1948) as by few other paintings.  Jesus stands in a serene, dreamy, radiant--yet slightly melancholy--little French village with a group of women and children.  The landscape surrounding them seems timeless: old trees, soft hills, water, all under a warm late afternoon sun.  There is so much serenity, so much of eternity and peace, in the colors, the images, the Expressionist brushwork.  Rouault gave us this work.  Rouault, who could paint human misery like no other, whose Miserere et Guerre was one of the most powerful artistic outcries against war, injustice, and the hard-heartedness of the bourgeoisie ever created.  Autumn ou Nazareth inspires me to remember that in the midst of daily hardships, especially those associated with caring for our children, and all our other endless domestic responsibilities, in the midst of the inevitable loss of family and friends, in the midst of the frustrations and difficulties of living in a society whose economy is based on greed and individual self-interest instead of cooperation and caring for one another, we can find (and fashion among ourselves, amongst our brother and sisters of the whole human family) the glowing serenity and beauty that is at the heart of life and of the journey to the East.  I stand looking out at Sunset Heights and the great jade elms of Dunn Park on the near horizon, and the blue mountains weathered by wind and rain and by the magician Time rising in the distance, with the crows laughing and finches singing overhead in the ash and crab apple and orange and peach trees, and children shouting and playing in the morning's bright absterging sunlight, and I know that Rouault’s Autumn ou Nazareth is everywhere.