"The Sunday School Treat"

This post is for the benefit of Lynn "who works with children", recently decanted to Edinburgh, and who visits this blog and occasionally comments. During our visit to Cornwall Sheila and I visited Penlee House in Penzance and in the art gallery I was fascinated by this picture. It is of an early Sunday school trip, and is an important and early piece of social documentation of what became for many years a highlight of children's lives.

The painting is called "The Sunday School Treat", and the artist was W H Y Titcomb, one of the Newry school of Cornish artists who flourished in the late Victorian period. This painting shows how Sunday School treats were done on the Cornish coast and estuaries. Despite the unfashionable subject matter some of Titcomb's best paintings document religious themes such as Primtive Methodist prayer meetings, pastoral care of the dying, and the prayer and devotions of the Cornish fishermen. Incidentally Thomas Cook started his travel business by organising day trips on trains (with food included) for Sunday Schools and Temperance gatherings.

Now Lynn - with all the health and safety, risk assessment, child protection and other essential legislative safeguards, I don't suppose we're ever likely to see the likes of these outings again. Anyway - it's so idyllic I thought I'd share it to encourage you and and all those whose ministry and vocational gifts are poured into the high energy demands of working with children. I reckon Jesus probably put such ministry into the higher echelons of good long term Kingdom building.

Comments

[lynn]

my oh my Jim....you know me so well .....I was loving looking at that picture; studying the detail as I read your words; the tender way the man in the boat was reaching out to receive the little child, the child "coorying behind" the skirts of the Sunday School teacher as she awaits her turn to embark; and then I thought.....
.....check out all the wee boys! They are all peering over the edge and surely one of them is about to fall in! The girls are on the left, hugging the wall; the boys are ALL on the right; leaning over the water. The painter has truly caught this important detail from empirical observation.

And there are not enough adults there to supervise! What about the ratios!? The BUGB's "Safe to Grow" guidelines are not being adhered to!

You're right. It's a beautiful painting, and I love it. I must forget the modern day entrapments (for want of a better description!) that so easily hinde and sometimes prevents the older generations blessing the young and I want to do all I can to foster such tender moments.

Thank you Jim, for reproducing the painting and telling us of its history, for thinking of me (in the freezing east) and for encouraging others who nurture faith or introduce the good news to the young.

I fancy I see something of Jesus in the outstretched hand of the man in the boat.....