Notes

In Bruce Arnott’s monograph on Bouscharain, he describes Adam and Eve Expelled from the Garden of Eden as “an individual version of a traditional theme. Here the supreme nakedness of Adam and Eve signifies ‘guilt’. But that Claude’s own view of the Fall is forgiving is revealed in the sense of innocence and vulnerability, of pathos, expressed by the two alienated beings. This sympathy reaches back to the artist’s adolescence:

When I was being prepared for confirmation, my minister, a man I liked and respected, became worried by my rebellious attitude. I just could not understand or accept the idea of original sin. I felt neither sinful, nor guilty, nor ashamed. Probably I had enough fears, inhibitions and frustrations of my own, without a guilt I had to imagine.

So the rational humanist in Claude declines to censure Adam and Eve; also, she prefers to invent her own mysteries...”¹

¹Bruce Arnott (1977) Claude Boucharain, Cape Town: Struik, pages 19 and 20.

Literature

Bruce Arnott (1977) Claude Bouscharain, Cape Town: Struik Publishers, illustrated on page 58, figure 39.