Return of the Prodigal Son

Dad must have found the elaborate little frame in a junk shop. It definitely has the air of having been used to frame a religious subject originally.
Since Dad saw Rembrandt’s ‘Return of the Prodigal Son’ he was fascinated by the subject. In 1942 he made a sort of copy/study of the Rembrandt and made his own interpretation of the subject in 1959 a year after this little picture. The positions of the main characters are more or less the same in both, but there the similarity ends.

This is on a piece of hardboard which Dad cut especially to fit the odd-shaped frame. The landscape behind with its formal tree and the buildings in the distance is distinctly like a Renaissance Italian picture and shows a hot country. Also in the distance are shown earlier stages of the son’s journey, a Renaissance device.The 1959 painting has a Yorkshire barn and hints of a northern town in the distance behind the ripe cornfield.

The warmly enthusiastic dog is so typical of Dad’s love of dogs!