William Holbrook Beard, “Santa Claus,” circa 1862
The forgotten painter William Holbrook Beard’s rendering of Santa in his swan sleigh only touches down in the galleries of the RISD’s Museum of Art during the holidays. You can see it through January 3, just past the main lobby, for a look at St. Nick as he carpet bombs a house with gifts—no chimney-surfing for this Sinterklaas. But Beard’s (like Clement Clarke Moore’s, before him) is just one (green-clad) personification of father Christmas: he emerged during the industrial revolution, when yuletide was evolving from an occasion for the exchange of homemade gifts into the consumer smack down we know today. For the rest of Santa’s story, see “The Vast Santanic Conspiracy” in The Las Vegas Weekly, where Mark Dery traces Santa’s roots to both an altruistic third century Greek orthodox bishop and a horned and hairy fertility god of the Middle Ages, asking, “Were Satan and Santa separated at birth?”
Tags: Mark Dery, RISD Museum of Art, Santa Claus, William Holbrook Beard
Thanks for the shout-out. One of the fascinating things about this odd little painting, as the museum placard noted, is its eerie, almost infernal vibe. The caption notes the almost ashcan realism (my words, but the plaque made that point, more or less) of the painting, in which Santa makes his way through Victorian smog, the sooty effluvia of a million coal fires. To my mind, it was unmistakably reminiscent of the creepy, dreamlike lighting of walpurgisnacht paintings—Goya’s witches’ sabbat, specifically. Fitting, given Santa’s pagan DNA. Also, he’s wearing green in this painting, which links him to the Green Man, from whom he lineally descends, according to Siefker in SANTA, LAST OF THE WILD MEN. Anyway, great post!