Asked to name the world’s best known painting, you might answer “The Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci. Asked to visualize the most recognized artwork, a different image may come to mind. It’s called the “Head of Christ.” You know it. Perhaps you grew up with it.
The iconic portrait of Jesus — with hair flowing, eyes upturned and an incandescent glow — was painted in 1940 by a commercial artist in Chicago. His name was Warner Sallman.
Ken Gaydos, of Edmonds, remembers Sallman. As a boy, Gaydos attended the same Chicago church where Sallman worshipped. It was called the Swedish Mission Covenant Church back then.
Now 76, Gaydos remembers that every Christmas season Sallman would stand in front of the congregation. “The choir would be singing, and he would do a chalk drawing of a biblical theme,” he said. And year-round, a huge version of Sallman’s “Head of Christ” was at the front of the church.
“I grew up with it,” Gaydos said.
A chaplain for the Edmonds fire and police departments, Gaydos is the founder of Support 7, a nonprofit program that has helped people affected by police and fire emergencies in south Snohomish County.
This month, an art exhibit in Seattle is reminding Gaydos of his boyhood connection to the painter who created the “Head of Christ.”
“Warner Sallman: The Master Painter” will be on view at Seattle’s Nordic Heritage Museum through Tuesday. It includes both Christian and secular works by Sallman. A son of Finnish and Swedish immigrants, the artist was 76 when he died in 1968.
On Friday, Gaydos met in Edmonds with LeRoy Carlson, who founded the Warner E. Sallman Art Collection, Inc., a decade ago in Chicago. The nonprofit organization works to collect, preserve and display Sallman’s art.
“I never knew Mr. Sallman, but I knew three of his children,” Carlson said Friday. Those children have died, but some of Sallman’s grandchildren are involved in the group.
Carlson and his wife Colleen brought the display to Seattle and other places. In Illinois, Carlson said, 41,000 people flocked to see Sallman’s art when it was displayed at the Billy Graham Center Museum at Wheaton College. There are original paintings at the Nordic Heritage Museum, but some are reproductions.
Gaydos has his own Sallman painting, a different image of Christ. He doesn’t know if it’s an original. It is a treasured possession. It was a wedding gift from Sallman and his wife Ruth. The artist signed its lower-right corner with a personal message: “To Lois Ann and J. Kenneth Gaydos on their wedding day, Aug. 10, 1963 — ‘Jesus himself drew near and went with them.’”
The Edmonds man said Sallman was a contemporary of his parents John and Eleanor Gaydos. The artist visited their home and a cabin the Gaydos family had at Delavan Lake in Wisconsin. “He was a good friend of my parents and my grandparents,” Gaydos said. “I remember as a young boy, him coming out to the little lake house up in southern Wisconsin.” And the artist can be seen on some of his family’s old home movies.
Gaydos has a favorite Sallman painting, and it’s not the “Head of Christ.” At 17, Gaydos joined the Navy and left home for San Diego and sea duty. The painting “Christ Our Pilot,” with a young man at a ship’s wheel and the figure of Jesus with a hand on the sailor’s shoulder, was one Gaydos has identified with through the years.
“That one impressed me, especially in the military. I knew there would be tough times ahead, but He will direct you,” Gaydos said.
In the Navy, Gaydos realized how well known Sallman’s work had become.
Carlson said the first version of what became “Head of Christ” was a charcoal drawing Sallman did in 1924 for the cover of a periodical called “The Covenant Companion.” Sallman called that first drawing “Son of Man.”
According to the Warner E. Sallman Art Collection, Inc., at least 500 million copies of the “Head of Christ” have been made. In 2009, there was a Swedish stamp with the image. It was first published and marketed in 1940 by Anthony Kriebel and Fred Bates, of the Gospel Trumpet Company in Anderson, Indiana. The copyright was later acquired by Warner Press, Inc.
The picture was used by the YMCA and the Salvation Army. It’s been displayed in countless churches and homes. The USO handed out pocket-sized versions of the “Head of Christ” to Americans going off to serve in World War II.
What Jesus of Nazareth actually looked like is a mystery. With his interpretation, Sallman created a lasting impression.
Gaydos has his own lasting impressions of the artist.
“I remember him as a very gracious man, like you’d want a good grandpa to be,” he said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Art on view
Seattle’s Nordic Heritage Museum is hosting “Warner Sallman: The Master Painter,” an exhibit of artwork by the Christian artist who painted the iconic “Head of Christ.” The display is on view through Tuesday. The museum is open noon-4 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday, open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. It is at 3014 NW 67th St., Seattle. Information: www.nordicmuseum.org/
Learn about the Warner E. Sallman Art Collection, Inc. at: www.sallmanart.org/
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