(continued)
To get an idea of how similar these illustrations would look - & the colors typically used - look at these illustrations:
lavistachurchofchrist.org/Pictures/Jesus%27%20Death,%20Resurrection%20and%20Ascention/index.html
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about when I say that a famous painting would be used by an inferior artist or illustrator to make a simple image that could be mass-produced.
Look at William Holman Hunt’s ‘Light of the World’:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hunt_Light_of_the_World.jpg
Here is a mass-produced image of ‘Jesus knocking at the door’:
lavistachurchofchrist.org/Pictures/Standard%20Bible%20Story%20Readers,%20Book%20Six/target50.html
You can see that these two images - the one by the very skilled artist & the one made for mass reproduction - are as different as an original Munkascy & the imitation you found on the Internet.
Have a look here, & you will see many versions of the theme of Jesus knocking at the door, & most of them are simplified, cheap ‘interpretations’ of Hunt’s painting, made for easy reproduction:
google.com.au/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Jesus%20knocks%22&biw=1160&bih=573&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
Notice that all the ‘Jesus knocks’ illustrations are a little bit different because they were made by different illustrators. But they are all in a similar ‘style’, especially the older ones that would have been mass-reproduced by primitive methods for reproducing colored images.
And that may be why no one can tell you where your illustration came from: because so many of those illustrations based on the Munkascy picture were made by so many publishers of religious cards & illustrated Bibles & cheap ‘religious prints’ that it’s impossible to track down where this one came from. The firm that produced it is probably long out of business - along with tens of other firms that also reproduced it, & their records have been lost over the decades.
Anyone can set up shop & make copies of famous paintings; anyone can draw his own version of a famous painting & sell it. And lots of people do. Trying to figure out - a hundred and more years later - who made this particular cheap copy for mass reproduction is very difficult. But it certainly can’t be from the hand of Munkascy. It looks too much like something made for the purposes of mass reproduction on primitive color reproduction machines.
I think you have to accept what the experts say: you’ve found a mass-produced, inferior copy of the general
scene as first done by Munkascy. But you most certainly have not found a genuine Munkascy. It’s more like a cartoon version of a Munkascy.
Have a look at websites that sell old religious cards. As you look at the cards & the illustrations from children’s Bibles, as well as ‘religious’ or ‘Bible’ prints that were used to teach religion to children, you will see that they all tend to look rather alike. Each manufacturer of these items had a similar ‘style’ depending on the commercial illustrators hired to make their cards and illustrations. The colors tend to be the same (maybe soft pastels with a blue background for ‘holy cards’ & vivid primary colors for images used for children). It’s like there’s a ‘style’ that tells you: this is a mass-produced color illustration.
Here is a useful site for seeing the similarities among these mass-produced images for children’s Bibles, religious cards & prints, etc:
lavistachurchofchrist.org/Picture.htm
Note the website’s explanation about the similarity among the images found in such books:
Old Bible story books for children contain a wealth of wonderful pictures useful for sermon illustrations, Bible class presentations, and writings. The following are some from my collection whose copyright have expired and, hence, are in the public domain and are free to be used.
Not all pictures from the books have been copied. Often the older books copied illustrations from each other, so I am trying to avoid repeats. I also left out images which were noteably inaccurate or which contained inappropriate drawings.
‘Often older books copied illustrations from one another’ - that’s why you find very small differences among the versions of ‘Christ before Pilate’ that were reproduced in mass quantities: an illustrator from one publishing firm was making his own version of an illustration by another publishing firm - & all were making copies of copies of Munkascy’s original.
As you look through the pictures on the site linked above, I think you’ll see what is meant. Jesus tends to look similar, or scenes are set up in similar ways. I noticed on two that Pilate has the same hair-style & general appearance, but is posed in a different way.
I think that the more you explore how publishers of mass-produced religious illustrations worked, the more you will see why there are the slight differences among the many mass-produced reproductions of Christ before Pilate.
You could probably do the same thing with Hunt’s ‘Light of the World’ by comparing all the small differences among the ‘Jesus knocks at the door’ illustrations that were based on Hunt’s original. You’ll see that they may have taken some details away (Jesus is not carrying a lamp, for example) and changed some things (Jesus is facing in a different direction) to make the picture ‘their own.’ And then, when someone copies
that copy, he changes the way the door looks, or the color of Jesus’s robe, or the way his hand is held while knocking. But all of them can probably trace their inspiration back to Hunt’s famous ‘Light of the World.’ The original artist had a great idea and made a great picture; illustrators capitalize on the idea by making their own cheap, easy-to-reproduce, simplified versions.
