Photographed by Scott Wolff. Scanned from a slide. Color corrected by Pat Cagney.

The Last Supper

Artist Erastus Salisbury Field (American, 1805-1900)

CultureAmerican

Dateca. 1875-1880

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsOverall: 35 x 46 in. (88.9 x 116.8 cm)
Overall, Frame: 40 1/2 in. (102.9 cm)

Credit LineGift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

Object number80.181.16

On View

Chrysler Museum of Art, Gallery 210

DescriptionThis is an oil on canvas painting of Christ and the twelve Apostles at the Last Supper, and is seen as a direct reference to Da Vinci's Last Supper. The layout of the room and arrangement and postures of the disciples are the same: the twelve are gathered on one side of the table in groups of three. The opposite side, where the viewer is "seated" remains empty. Christ, in the center, sits with a window behind him, illuminating his deity. The departure from Da Vinci lies most strongly in the palette and perspective: the colors are brighter and sharper, lacking Da Vinci's use of sfumato. Likewise, Field's painting lacks the use of a vanishing point.

Label TextErastus Salisbury Field American, 1805—1900 The Last Supper, ca. 1875-1880 Oil on canvas Erastus Salisbury Field enjoyed a long and varied career, working as a portraitist, photographer, and in the latter decades of his life as a painter of religious and historical subjects. Field based this depiction of the biblical tale of the Last Supper on a chromolithograph, a relatively inexpensive type of color print, of Leonardo da Vinci’s fresco in Milan, Italy. Though Field adhered to the overall composition of the Renaissance master, he included many details drawn from his own world in Connecticut such as the simple glass and pottery table settings and the rolling landscape viewed out the window, which bears a striking resemblance to the Connecticut River Valley. Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch 80.181.16 ProvenancePurchased from Robert Schuyler Tompkins, March 7, 1949; Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1949; Gift of Edgar William & Bernice Chrysler Garbisch to the Chrysler Museum, 1980. Exhibition HistoryOn loan at National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1953-1980. "Erastus Salisbury Field: 1805-1900," Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Mass., February 5 - April 1, 1984; National Museum of American Art and National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., June 10 - September 4, 1984; Museum of American Folk Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y., November - December 1984; Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Tex., January - February 1985. (Exh. cat. no. 94) "The Allegorical Table," The Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Newport News, Va., November 20, 1993 - January 9, 1994; William King Regional Art Center, Abingdon, Va., February 19 - April 10, 1994. Reproduced on the invitation cover for the opening events. Published ReferencesMary Black, _Erastus Salisbury Field: 1805-1900_, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Mass., 1984, 51, no. 94. ISBN: 0916746062 Chrysler Museum staff, "Museum Paintings on National Tour," _Chrysler Museum Bulletin_ 14, no. 8 (August 1984): not paged. Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_ (Norfolk: The Chrysler Museum, 1991), 128, plate 102. ISBN: 0-940744-59-7, 0-940744-62-7 Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 48-49, no. 23. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6