Medium: oil
Size: 33.5 x 43 inches
Exhibited: Dudley Gallery, 1868
“The brethren of the congregation of Saint Yon, better known as the ‘Freres Ignorantins’, and as teachers in elementary national schools, do not reverence the memory of Voltaire, who, as is well known, renounced the tenets early inculcated by his priestly tutors. The philosopher of Verney’s bust is placed in a niche at Chatenay, his birth-place.”
Current owner: Private collection
Under its English title ‘A Procession of Priests’, this painting was auctioned at Christie’s on 3 February 1967. It was auctioned again by Christie’s Belgravia on 2 October 1979 under the title ‘Knowing Glances’. It was sold by a dealer in Kentucky in around 1980 and is currently in private ownership.
A black and white image and details of sales are on the Paul Mellon Centre Photographic Archive catalogue.
The Era, 1 November 1868:
At the end of the Gallery is placed Mr. Eyre Crowe’s important picture, numbered 189, and entitled Freres Ignorantins. It represents a long procession of the religious brethren of St. Yon, in their shovel hats and black cassocks, passing the bust of Voltaire, placed in a niche, at Chantenay, his birthplace. This is a peculiar and very difficult subject to treat, and the artist has most skilfully delineated the feelings supposed to animate the brethren as they pass the bust of the man whose memory they almost execrate. This picture is one of mark in the Exhibition.
The London review of politics, society, literature, art and science, 7 Nov 1868:
Mr. Eyre Crowe’s “Freres Ignorantins” is also good. The brethren are passing along a street in Chatenay and the solemn pairs of black-garmented priests pass under a bust of Voltaire. The expression of the various faces of the brethren, as they become conscious that the stone eyes of the enemy are upon them, is very finely painted. There is something awkward, however, in the drawing of the right leg of each of the priests. People do not walk in that fashion, unless they labour under malformation of the lower limbs.
Athenaeum, 14 November 1868:
Mr E. Crowe’s Frères Ignorantins (139) is incomparably his best picture, whether as regards colour, lighting or character: a long line of black-robed brethren defiles through the street at Chatenay, the birthplace of Voltaire, the peculiar enemy of their order, and, as they go, regard, or obliquely disregard, the high placed bust of the philosopher of Ferney. Their expressions of disgust, contempt, shame, anger and pain are given with remarkable power and wealth in studies. The whole work is admirably contrived.
Art Journal, December 1868:
Eyre Crowe is another painter who, in this gallery [The Dudley Gallery], struggles laudably into better courses. ‘Frères Ignorantins’, by this artist of eccentricity, is a work of mitigated horrors. Nothing more dreadful than the bust – almost out of sight – of the infidel Voltaire, horrifies the pious minds of ‘The Brethren of the Congregation of Saint Yon’. The situation is strained and overdone, in order that the artist may make his picture … This objection would have less relevance, had it not been the habit of the artist to force his subject beyond the bounds of moderation. The painter has certainly made the most of his original and impossible thought. The mode in which he has wrought up the expression of the individual heads is beyond praise; each figure is marked in character, and pushed even to the verge of caricature. Even the attitudes of the three-cornered hats speak volumes; the church denounces heresy through the hatmaker and the tailor. It is a pity that the shadows are so black, that the harsh monotony of the lines is so unbroken, and that the background is not more varied; but these traits are the artist’s manner, and we accept it as not only peculiar, but original and strong.
Eyre Crowe (1824-1910) 