The Celebration of the Mass
Harry W. Watrous American
After extensive studies in Europe, Watrous settled in New York City and made a specialty of historical genre scenes, along with idealized images of women and landscapes. Around 1923 he began to paint still lifes, usually arrangements of the antique decorative objects he eagerly collected. This canvas shows a gilded and polychromed but damaged wood relief sculpture of three cardinals and four priests celebrating Mass before an altar. The relief appears to rest on a thin stone slab supporting other carefully delineated objects—a device that recalls works by earlier American trompe-l’oeil (“deceive the eye”) painters.
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