At the Melbourne Art Gallery is a painting by the late John Pettie, R.A. It is entitled Challenged, and it once adorned the walls of the Royal Academy in London.A young aristocrat has been called from his sumptuous couch in the early morning by a challenge to a duel. There he stands, attired in his blue dressing gown, holding the momentous document in his hand. His old serving-man, who has delivered the missive to his master, is vanishing through the distant door; a sword reposes suggestively upon a chair.
But the whole artistry of the picture is concentrated in the face. It is the face of a thoughtless, shallow, self-indulgent young man-about-town suddenly startled to gravity and something like nobleness. By means of that face, the artist has skillfully portrayed the fact that life becomes smitten with sudden grandeur the moment it is challenged by stupendous issues. Life and death confront this young lord, and he becomes a new man as he realizes their stately significance. No person amounts to much until all their faculties have been challenged.
F W Boreham, A Witch’s Brewing (London: The Epworth Press, 1932), 89.
Image: John Pettie.