The Garden of Eden (1901)

The Garden of Eden, by Hugh Goldwin Riviere (1860-1956), was painted in 1901 and hangs at London’s Guildhall Art Gallery. Its title in incongruous with its depiction: a dim and misty atmosphere within the park, in which the trees are denuded, the sky is wintry, the air is cold and the ground is damp. The couple wear dark clothes and his collar is turned up. One might have expected a golden, summer’s afternoon, the trees verdant, the flowers swaying. Yet in this cold and drab scene, the young woman's pale face is lit with delight as the man clasps her hand and shows her, though not us, his face.

The Garden of Eden, paradise on earth, was not heavenly because of its laden fruit trees, its friendly animals, its pleasant temperatures or general absence of all death and suffering. It was paradisical because Christ walked there, in the cool of the evening. Wherever we go, wherever we end up, if Christ goes with us, we walk in heaven itself. It is a bishop that makes a church a cathedral, the king that makes a territory a kingdom, and Christ Jesus who makes a patch of earth into a paradise.

O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without Thee, it would be hell; and if I could be in hell, and have Thee still, it would be heaven to me, for Thou are all the heaven I want. -Samuel Rutherford