Return of the Prodigal Son

Dad must have found the elaborate little frame in a junk shop. It definitely has the air of having been used to frame a religious subject originally.
Since Dad saw Rembrandt’s ‘Return of the Prodigal Son’ he was fascinated by the subject. In 1942 he made a sort of copy/study of the Rembrandt and made his own interpretation of the subject in 1959 a year after this little picture. The positions of the main characters are more or less the same in both, but there the similarity ends.

This is on a piece of hardboard which Dad cut especially to …

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Dad must have found the elaborate little frame in a junk shop. It definitely has the air of having been used to frame a religious subject originally.
Since Dad saw Rembrandt’s ‘Return of the Prodigal Son’ he was fascinated by the subject. In 1942 he made a sort of copy/study of the Rembrandt and made his own interpretation of the subject in 1959 a year after this little picture. The positions of the main characters are more or less the same in both, but there the similarity ends.

This is on a piece of hardboard which Dad cut especially to fit the odd-shaped frame. The landscape behind with its formal tree and the buildings in the distance is distinctly like a Renaissance Italian picture and shows a hot country. Also in the distance are shown earlier stages of the son’s journey, a Renaissance device.The 1959 painting has a Yorkshire barn and hints of a northern town in the distance behind the ripe cornfield.

The warmly enthusiastic dog is so typical of Dad’s love of dogs!

Richard did three paintings based on the prodigal son theme:

• The Prodigal Son, after Rembrandt (1942)
• The Return of the Prodigal Son (1958)
• The Return of the Prodigal Son (1959)