Who is the most frequently painted figure in history?

My guess would be Jesus Christ, partly because of the enduring impact of Christianity, partly because Islam bans depictions of the human figure, and also because the church has long been one of the greatest patrons of the arts.

The first known painting of Christ was made around 235 AD in Syria, and it showed a young man, clean shaven with cropped hair and wearing a tunic, the common dress of that time.

It was a further 200-odd years before paintings of the Crucifixion appeared, soon followed by such key events as the Nativity, while devotional subjects included the Madonna and Child and Christ in Majesty. By this time, most paintings of Christ showed a white man with beard, long hair and a centre parting; a figure from the artists’ own society.

There were exceptions — Ethiopian parchments, for example, plus the famed Black Christ with his disciples in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, painted on a wooden panel, that dates from around 400AD — but the view of Jesus as a white man generally held sway.

The rise of black consciousness in the last century brought many more paintings of a black Jesus, and in East Africa the best known example is at the Anglican cathedral in Murang’a, Kenya, with Elimo Njau’s five huge murals from 1959.

He commented recently, “I did the work for free and my aim was simply to tell the story of Christ from an African perspective, away from what the colonialists were ramming down our throats.”

In this, Njau was treading the path of artists through the ages — showing Christ as a figure reflecting the society in which they lived and worked; as a figure with whom their intended audience could most easily identify.

And that makes it all the stranger that a current exhibition in Kenya of the life of Christ depicts Him throughout as white.

The artist is Evans Yegon who appears to insist on the nom-de-peintre Yegonizer, which he emblazons across every painting as a signature and prints on each label and piece of publicity.

His subjects, it tells us, have passed through the prism of his consciousness, rather as though they have gone through the spin cycle of a washing machine, and thus have come out thoroughly Yegonized.

It also tells us he is relentlessly aware of his own image.

His exhibition, at the National Museums of Kenya on Museum Hill, Nairobi, was timed to coincide with Easter and runs until the end of May but should not be taken to be, as a museum notice earnestly points out, a Christian shrine.

If there were an exhibition of historic manuscripts of the Koran or paintings of Muslims at prayer, would there be an apology in case anyone thought the museum were promoting Islam? I suspect not. Unfortunately, this anxious disclaimer is one of the more interesting things about the exhibition.

For, subject aside, it has to be said that Yegon has some trouble with the basics of his craft.

Fundamentally an illustrator, the brush drawings that so prominently underpin his 35 offerings lack sensitivity, his anatomy is surprisingly weak in places and his colours are brash, destroying depth and descending at times to the level of curio stall art.

His Calvary, for example, shows the crosses silhouetted spikily against a garishly flaring background of yellow, orange and red. A similar gaudy scheme is used for Deny Me; the episode where St Peter denies knowing Christ before the cock crows thrice.

More generally, a clashing palette detracts from the compositions rather than enhances their coherence, while much of the painting — acrylics on canvas — is so sketchy that it gives the impression of having been dashed off to create easel space for the next masterpiece rather than having been properly considered.

The notice that tries to explain all this away — “Yegonizer’s riotous disorder is a really thrilling way of making a realistic artwork additionally abstract” — strikes me at once as an oxymoron (what on earth is “abstract realism”?) and, frankly, as a prime example of desperate, if amusing, curatorial gibberish.

I was disappointed too that Yegon’s inspiration for one of the better compositions here, Perspective of the Sinners, a dizzying bird’s eye view of the crucifixion, was lifted from Salvadore Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross, presented without even the courtesy of a line stating, “after Dali” or “Homage to Dali.”
No, this show, called Hope: A story of courage and sacrifice, does not come up to scratch in almost every respect.
Exceptions can be found among ecclesiastical goods lent by the archdiocese of Nyeri to add weight and context to the exhibition.

They include two restrained silver Communion cups and a priest’s chasuble, which is inset with coloured gemstones and magnificently embroidered in gold thread on white damask.

Now they really are worth seeing.