The Repentent Judge - from "The Eternal Judgement" series

Harold Persico Paris

The series "Eternal Judgement" resulted in Paris getting his first Guggenheim award in 1953. As the project progressed the theme was changed to the monumental "Hosannah Suite", begun after working at Atelier 17 in New York, though he was mainly self-taught. The "Eternal Judgement" series was not completed as a project and this image, sometimes ascribed to the "Hosannah Suite" is not included in the Portland Museum 1987 catalogue illustrating that suite from their collection.

This composition depicts a humpty-dumpty like figure, dressed in a jesters garb, astride a creature, perhaps a dog. The figure, a judge or king, wears a crown and is being silenced with a gag. Is this a result of revolution or oppression?

In 1952, Harold Paris began the preliminary drawings for what would eventually become a suite of prints entitled Hosannah. The project was originally titled "Eternal Judgment", and Paris was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for it in 1953. It wasn't until 1958 that the first version of the suite was completed in Nancy, France and exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Paris made a total of five suites, completing the final version, known as the Portland Suite, in 1971. This version is unique in that it contains nine accompanying drawings. Paris said of these, "... some of the nine drawings are preparatory sketches for etchings and lithographs while others remain related ideas and drawings only." This unique version resides at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute, Portland, Oregon.

Paris noted about the symbolic images in the portfolio: "'Hosannah' is a reflection of the Mystic Forces that move us and have moved me in my Life. I believe in the Images that are presented here. Their reality and humaness are an integral part of all the World as I know it." The images in the portfolio brings to mind the works of Bruegel, Goya, Redon, and Rouault.

The 'Hosannah Suite' is epical or legendary in its design, and Portland Art Museum curator Gordon Gilkey wrote: "Paris has identified four guiding themes for its creation: "Angelic War, Trial of Man, Fall and Submergence, and Hosannah. The word Hosannah is defined as a word of praise or adoration, especially in Judaic and Christian use. This should not confuse the reader into thinking that Hosannah is a religious work. It is spiritual and secular, and the ideas and emotions that are expressed by the images are both universal and very personal, relating feelings of anxiety, despair, anguish, and misery."

The first copy of Hosannah consists of thirty-one prints, three of them being colored. The techniques the artist used are varied; metal intaglios, lithographs, and acrylic engravings, and the sizes of the images are generally large. Individual prints from the suites have found themselves dispersed to different collections including the Library of Congress, and the National Gallery of Art, among others.