While Sallman’s imagery is often dismissed for its sentimentality, it is clear in details such as this and in the overall composition of The Lord is My Shepherd that he was able to create pictures that convey very effectively the sentiment that mattered to his appreciative public. In this painting, for instance, Christ and his flock are nestled in a brightly painted landscape that wraps about them; framed by the diagonal creek in the lower left, the sheep are surrounded by the hatched movement of the verdure and the diagonal shore of the river to the upper right. The tree in the upper left echoes Christ’s gesture and helps construct a balanced and centered composition that conveys the serenity which Sallman and his audience considered the ideal of the pious life. One mother, for whom the Head of Christ symbolized stability and peace during a childhood plagued by an alcoholic parent, displayed Christ in Gethsemane in her bedroom. She referred to Christ “holding the lamb with the mother sheep looking on with concern” and drew great relief from the relationship between savior, lamb, and the ewe as she thought about her own children: “What solace to know who held them (her children) as they began to go out on their own.”

Sallman found the idea for this painting in Bernhard Plockhorst’s nineteenth-century portrayal of the subject, which shows the mother sheep craning its head upward toward its lamb in Christ’s arms. Sallman elevated the viewer above the scene somewhat in order to introduce the colorful landscape. Yet in adjusting the perspective of the landscape and sheep, he did not reduce the height of Christ who towers above the flock gathering about his knees. This characteristic diminution of subject matter may be an important element in the great appeal of Sallman’s work: by making the sheep doll-like, Sallman enhanced their dependence on the paternal savior and gave them a charm that corresponds to the cherubic cuteness of children in such images as He Careth For You.

--Excerpt of 1994 exhibition catalogue by Dr. David Morgan, Department of Art, Valparaiso University. Used with permission. Sallman images copyrighted by Warner Press, Inc. Used with permission.