Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1962, Blaðsíða 75

EINAR JÓNSSON
57
specifically the faith in Christ and
in his doctrine of love.”13 His faith,
thus, was an optimistic one in which
there was no room for the, to him,
dark doctrine of eternal damnation.
As already indicated, Jónsson’s
views on art were closely bound
up with his philosophy of life. He
saw art as an essential quality of
all life—as the very “garb of the
individuality placed at our free dis-
posal to enable us to beautify our
inner spiritual being for the benefit
and edification of ourselves and of
others.”14 Here, I believe, is to be
found the reason for Jónsson’s in-
sistence upon originality and in-
dividualism in artistic expression.
The reason for the religious and
philosophical strain in his art is
also suggested in the quotation
above but emerges more definitely
in his theory on the very essence
of art: namely, that nature, or exis-
tence—from the crystal to the
nebula, from the lowest to the high-
est forms of life—is the true source
of art. Thus, it follows, in his opin-
ion, that art is a part of life and
should therefore serve life by,
among other things, helping the hu-
man spirit to attain the greatest pos-
sible development and indepen-
dence.15 In short, Jónsson wished to
recreate in his own way, and in
the service of the highest and the
noblest, those wonders of existence
which he was able to perceive—
not, let it be noted, by consistently
trying to imitate Nature, but rather
by learning from her how to create
his own forms from his world of
ideas in somewhat the same way
14. Skodanir, p. 102.
15. Ibid., p. 134.
as Nature creates hers, he felt, from
her world of ideas, and by using his
intuition for expressing that which
otherwise would not be expressed.16
Jónsson’s religion, or philosophy of
life, is manifested in his works in
a variety of ways; but only a few
of the manifestations can be sug-
gested here.
First may be mentioned two
important themes that recur in many
of his works: the victory of good
over evil and the human spirit to-
ward a higher goal. Examples of
the former are “Dawn,” showing
the “night troll” turning into stone
in the rays of the rising sun and the
maiden, who had been carried away
by him, joyously greeting her savior
the sun; and “The Spell Broken”, de-
picting the knight who delivers the
king’s daughter from the spell cast
on her and who symbolizes the
Savior who redeems the soul from
the power of sin.17 The latter theme
is seen in a number of Jónsson’s
works. Take for instance “The Wave
of the Ages” (1894-1905), which in
a beautiful manner symbolizes
humanity being swept upward with
the spiral of evolution. Or consider
“Evolution” (1913-1914), perhaps
the most clearly theosophical of all
of Jónsson’s works, which depicts
man growing away from the beast
in him toward the Christ-life. The
same upward surge is seen in “To-
ward the Light” (a painting from
1913-1915) and in “The Dedication”
(1946), to mention two more ex-
amples.
Another indication of Jónsson’s
religious preoccupation is the great
16. Ibid., p. 154.
17. Finnbogason, op. cit., p. 77.