In a sleepy corner of Hove, (well, poet’s corner to be precise) is the church of St. Barnabas. You’d be forgiven for even noticing it was there – not that its unremarkable, quite the contrary. St. Barnabas is a beautiful gothic revival building designed by John Loughborough Pearson, but you can’t really get a good vista of it due to the surrounding buildings and main road. For the intrepid art-liking-person, there is a little known gem hanging inside the church – a magnificent ‘life-size’ ‘copy’ of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

Back in 2007, I was working with the collection of Dutch and Flemish Old Masters at Brighton Museum, and the Vicar of the church contacted the museum conservator who asked if I would go and have a look at the church paintings, with the intention of identifying them. All of the paintings in the church are copies of Old Masters, but good early copies – one was after Raphael (if my memory serves me it was Madonna of the Cloth), another is a very pleasant copy of Rubens Holy Family With Parrot (or more likely after the engraving by Bolswert as it’s in reverse), additionally there is a copy of Lippi’s Annunciation, which I think was in the rectory at the time.

The copy of the The Last Supper is the most interesting of the paintings in the church, and had at some stage acquired an anecdotal association to Henry Fuseli. The picture was purchased for the church by the Reverend Francis Henry Dumville Smythe, who had been the Vicar from 1909-1929. Old Dumville Smythe was partial to a bit of art collecting and amassed an astounding collection of British Watercolours by leading artists of the 18th and 19th century, that would give any other collection before or since a run for its money. He was also a generous fellow – donating 1,300 watercolours to New Zealand, the majority of which can be seen in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, as well as 22 to the British Museum, and a few to Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

According to the church guidebook, The Last Supper was purchased by Smythe in London, 1914 for the bargain price of £25 (which apparently included delivery). Annoyingly I’ve no idea where the painting was purchased, nor can I find any sales record in that year for a Last Supper. Whilst the painting is a bit Fuseli-esque – by that I mean there’s a touch of gothic about it, especially the colouring (the pointing St. Peter is also reminicient of the figures in Fuseli’s Three Witches) – I have been unable to find anything down that route bar the fact that one of Fuseli’s lectures was on The Last Supper. If Fuseli had painted this, there would at the very least be some record of it, either in his own letters or Knowles’s biography on the artist, or from another source. A painting like this is a colossal undertaking – for a start you’d need a massive room (the painting is 17 x 10 feet), quite a lot of money for the materials (which aren’t cheap now let alone then), a giant easel and an awful lot of time on your hands. My guess is that the painting may have originated from the Royal Academy Schools while Fuseli was professor of painting – the Academy had purchased the Giampietrino copy of The Last Supper in 1821 and according to the council were ‘of the opinion that the possession of such a work would be of essential benefit to the Schools of the Academy’. Logistically, the artist of this picture would have needed a space like the Academy in order to execute the work. The Royal Academy encouraged students to copy from the work of the Old Masters and the painting is also closer to the Giampietrino than it is to Leonardo’s original (Leonardo’s being a fresco is site specific). It seems logical to me that the painting may be the work of Academy student(s) (it would explain how Fuseli’s name became attached), and a date of 1820-30 is, I would say, fitting for the St. Barnabas version. However, I can see flaws in my logic – the painting for me is cohesive and conveys the ideas of one very proficient painter, rather than many inexperienced hands.

The painting is quite high up on the wall so you’d need a ladder and decent eye-sight to try finding a signature – I couldn’t find anything. Annoyingly, I expect some clues are verso, but the painting hasn’t been off the wall since 1914 and the task would be a logistical nightmare. It frustrates me that I haven’t been able to find any reference of this painting, and there must be one (maybe in the Witt) but now I live in the sticks my resources are basic at best, so if anyone has any ideas I’d love to hear them – I also highly recommend a visit to the church to see it.