Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.” — Lawrence Block
When I travelled to Barbados to attend a fabulous beach wedding, I didn’t know that I would be taken to visit a beautiful Anglican Church called St. George’s in the village of St. George. On the afternoon of my last day in “Beautiful Barbados,” I became a tourist. I took in all the scenery and the church itself and was happy to take many pictures.
When I took the above pictures which I made into a collage, I took them for the beauty of the painting and most of all for the fresh flowers that graced the altar below the painting. Little did I know that this painting had such an interesting history. For the purposes of writing this post, I was doing a little research on the church and found the following fascinating information:
The imposing structure of the St. George Parish Church today features more Georgian inspired architecture with just a few gothic touches, like the buttresses which are present on quite a few of the churches located on the island of Barbados. St. George Parish Church is a large church and quite beautiful to look at but the church also has another claim to fame; inside the church, hanging above the altar is a magnificent resurrection painting entitled ‘Rise to Power’. This painting was painted by the renowned American artist, Benjamin West. The painting was commissioned by the Hon. Henry Frere for the St. George Parish Church. However, when the painting landed in Barbados, a row between the rector of the church, Rev. John Carter and Mr. Frere prevented the painting from being displayed in the church. Instead it was stored in an outbuilding at the home of Henry Frere on the Lower Estate Plantation in Barbados. The painting remained entombed there for more than thirty years. Subsequently, as legend has it, a thief who was hiding in the said outbuilding, was so rattled by Jesus’ gaze that he punched the eye out of the painting. To date, the eye of the painting still bears the patch that has never been repaired since efforts to have the damage rectified over sixty years ago proved futile. The painting eventually made it into this church in Barbados in 1820, and today is probably one of the most beautiful religious paintings in the world.
This just goes to show that there are undiscovered treasures all over the world and while I was not in pursuit of treasure, I found one. I started to pay a different kind of attention to the painting – especially looking at the eye, Had I known this story, I would have gone much closer and got a close-up picture. However, I hope what I have here will suffice and be treasure for you too.
Here are some other pictures I took while I visited the church and with which I created photo collages. They portray what I saw on that lovely Sunday evening. While we were leaving the church, someone drove up to the parking space reserved for the Rector – whether that was the Rector or not, I do not know.
The cemetery is very old and most of the tombs are not maintained. This is, perhaps, because most of the relatives are themselves deceased.
This collage shows a little more of the architecture.
These are different stained glass windows in the church that I made into one collage.
I hadn’t seen a pulpit like this one for years – a real antique – wooden, and with stairs.
This church has beautiful flowers. Kudos to whoever looks after the flowers! You can see how the whole arrangement looks and also some of the individual flowers in the collage.
This is another collage I did with the flowers at the altar, in the entranceway, and in the church garden The church yard has a lovely garden which is well maintained.
It’s always interesting to see the signs that are used in whatever places we visit. This is a heritage site as you can see from the “Barbados National Trust ” blue sign on the wall. I don’t remember seeing a sign with the name of the church on the outside. However, the “Alms” box sign is very interesting too, as is the “Family Reserved.”
Hope you enjoyed visiting St. George’s with me.
