Images of Christ: Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

Rowena Loverance discusses an artwork in the heart of rural England

When I started this series, I knew it would probably be as much about me as Jesus. By the third month it was beginning to dawn on me that it was probably not by coincidence that this idea had come to me this particular year. As we struggle with the painful business of trying to understand what we, and our fellow citizens, understand by ‘Britain’, it becomes ever more apparent that in choosing how to represent Jesus, British artists have had to reflect as much on their idea of Britain as on their idea of God.

This month’s art work comes from the rural heart of England. A mile or so downriver from Oxford, Iffley Church is one of the glories of late Norman architecture. Two tiny window openings, at the west end near the font, retain their original form; twenty-two years ago a stained-glass window by John Piper, last month’s artist, was installed in one of them, and five years ago Roger Wagner, the Oxford-based artist, was tasked with creating its pair.

Visionary landscapes are part of the great tradition of English art and poetry; one thinks of William Blake and Paul Nash, of Thomas Traherne and T S Eliot. Especially, looking at Roger Wagner’s window, one thinks of Samuel Palmer and his watercolour The Magic Apple Tree. Roger Wagner’s tree is bursting with May blossom, while Samuel Palmer’s is weighed down with autumn fruit, but the same sheep huddle beneath its shade and the rabbits nibbling on the fritillaries might have hopped straight out of Palmer’s sepia drawing, Early Morning.

It is important to qualify all this English pastoralism. The Christmas carol which has done most to popularise this imagery, ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’, first appeared in New England, in a late eighteenth century hymn collection by Joshua Smith, a Baptist minister in New Hampshire – it may or not be connected with the fact that cider had been a life-saver for the first English settlers in North America. Roger Wagner is equally inspired by the majesty – and depravity – of man-made works: his best known work, Menorah, sets the Crucifixion against the lowering background of Didcot power station. But for his window at Iffley he has reached for that most grounded of images, a tree and its fruit. It is the Cross, since Christ hangs on it, but it explodes with pristine life and energy – so is it also the Tree of Life, which appears both at the beginning and end of the Bible (Genesis 2:9 and Revelation 22:2). Or, most evocative of all, are we being transported into the erotic world of the Song of Songs (2:3): ‘As the apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men.’

So maybe the artist is turning the image back on us: is our love for Jesus as abundant as this May blossom? Do we need to be sustained with raisins (a more accurate translation than flagons, apparently) and refreshed with apples – are we so possessed by our faith that we are ‘faint with love’?

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