Jacques Iselin - The Elements of the Holy Communion

1 Corinthians 11: 23–26

The ‘elements’ of the Holy Communion are the bread and wine. This painting explores them and their origins. As well as the chalice of wine and the long loaf of bread, Iselin portrays wheat from which the bread is made, some mysterious, half-hidden objects, and a fish. The fish is a Christian symbol. The Greek word for fish is made up from the initial letters of the Greek words ‘Jesus, Christ, of God, the Son, Saviour’. This combines the literary aspect of the liturgy with the mysterious presence of Christ in the Communion. The rich bright background suggests the textiles often used for altar frontals or priests’ vestments at Communion services. While not a traditional representational painting, this is not an abstract work, but a symbolic, figurative exploration of the central mysteries of the Church and Christianity.

Commentary based on A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection.

Born: Rosny-sous-Bois, France, 1933

Died: Kensington & Chelsea, London, 2003

Early life and education

Jacques Henri Iselin was born in France and studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1952 to 1956.

Life and career

Iselin won the Institut de France prize in 1956. He moved to England in 1960 and taught art at the Lycée Français in London for many years. Despite living in England for most of his working life, with a studio in Fulham, he retained links and involvement with the artistic life of France and exhibited widely there in the early years of his career.

From the early 1970s he preferred not to hold solo shows, but to exhibit in a number of group shows held in Paris, London, Manchester, Leeds, Geneva, Luxembourg and at the Sao Paulo Biennale.

In the 1970s he was an active member of the group of artists and writers who produced the magazine Contrordre in Paris, along with Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, Tony Cartano and Henri Michaux.

Little of Iselin’s work from the 1970s or before survives. An exception is three large oil paintings from the 1960s which are tributes to three artists Iselin greatly admired – Delacroix, Manet and Renoir. These paintings are similar to The Elements of Holy Communion (1963) in the Methodist Modern Art Collection in the prominent use of red and yellow (with a deep rich blue in the Manet painting). These works and the Collection’s work differ from the genre scenes and landscapes that Iselin exhibited in his Couper Fine Art show in 1963. Judging from the black and white photographs in the catalogue, they are in the French realist tradition led in the post-war years by artists such as Edouard Pignon.

Iselin did not distinguish between ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ work and other work. Personal mortality, with all its religious or spiritual connotations was central to all his work. For him, painting necessitated “looking your own death in the face”. It is no surprise that his work in the Methodist Modern Art Collection does not merely ‘illustrate’ the doctrine of Holy Communion, but rather encapsulates it visually.

In 1990 Iselin was honoured in France with promotion to the rank of Officier des Palmes Académiques. In 2012 a posthumous retrospective exhibition was held in Hastings Arts Forum, St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex.

Solo exhibitions included: the Galerie Présence des Arts, Paris (1961); and the French Institute, London (1961).

Group exhibitions included: Salon de la jeune peinture, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (1959); and Cosmopolis, Whitworth Museum, Manchester (1964).

David Buckman, Artists in Britain Since 1945: Volume 1 A to L. Vol. 1. 2 vols, (Bristol: Art Dictionaries Ltd, 2006), p. 810. The text is also available on the Art UK website: artuk.org/discover/artists/iselin-jacques-19332003 (accessed 30 April 2025)

Seeing the Spiritual: A Guide to the Methodist Modern Art Collection. (Oxford, Methodist Modern Art Collection, 2018), pp. 68–69.

Roger Wollen, Catalogue of the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art with an Account of the Collection’s History. (Oxford: The Trustees of the Methodist Collection of Modern Christian Art, 2003), pp. 91–94.

Website of Olivier Cadic, Sénateur. Hommage à Jacques Iselin, ancien professeur d’art au lycée Charles de Gaulle. oliviercadic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Jacques-Henri-Iselin.pdf