Revelatory Art

Contemplate this folk art feature—Vision from Book of Revelation by McKendree Robbins Long.

Born in Statesville, North Carolina, McKendree Robbins Long attended the Art Students League in New York and was awarded a two-year scholarship to study in London, Holland, and Spain. He returned to Statesville as a portrait painter and worked throughout North Carolina. He served as a sergeant in France during World War I and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1922; later he became an evangelist.

After a hiatus of more than thirty-five years, Long returned to painting. Vision from the Book of Revelation is from a series of more than ninety large paintings that illustrate Long's visionary response to the New Testament's Revelation of Saint John the Divine. He combined Scriptures from different chapters to create his own interpretation of the traditional text. This painting includes depictions of holy figures in the clouds, seven trumpets raining "hail and fire mingled with blood" (8:7) down upon Armageddon, with the "great city, the holy Jerusalem" (21:10) across "a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal" (22:1).

Frequently Long included modern technology in his scenes of the destruction of mankind. In this painting, assembled forces of tanks, infantry, aircraft, and missiles wait on a plain across the fish-filled river from Jerusalem. He avoids nationalistic statements by withholding the identities of his army. Long interprets in modern terms the Revelation passage, "Satan shall be loosed out of his prison … to gather them together to battle … and fire came down from God out of heaven" (20:7–9).

Source: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).

Pictured: McKendree Robbins Long Sr., 1888–1976, Vision from Book of Revelation, 1966, oil, 44 1/8 x 52 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.