An angel inside a vision inside a picture

The title stages two levels at once: a vision experienced after a sermon, and inside it the wrestling of Jacob with the angel. That structure is unusual in this catalogue. Almost every other entry shows an angel present in the world of the picture; here the record's own title marks the angelic encounter as something seen rather than something happening — a vision belonging to the figures who are watching it.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1888 and gives Paul Gauguin, a French painter. No style term is recorded for this entry, which is worth stating plainly rather than filling in. The recorded location is the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, the recorded dimensions are 74.4 x 93.1 cm, and the measured colour family is red — the entry is also filed under colour as a subject in its own right, which is a rare pairing with a religious category in this catalogue.

Rank has nothing to do with it

The angel of the wrestling episode has no name and no place in the nine-order hierarchy, and by the late nineteenth century that vagueness had become an advantage. A painter who wanted an angel as an idea rather than as a member of a heavenly court needed a figure with no fixed attributes to contradict him. This is the angel the modern period kept: unnamed, unranked, and available.