Spring Cleaning (circa 1930)

Roland Pitchforth’s Spring Cleaning is an oil on canvas dating to around 1930, around the start of his teaching career at St Martin’s School of Art. Although there is nothing obviously comical about the theme, the picture shows three amusingly stout individuals wrestling with a chest of drawers, while a fourth looks on armed with a brush, waiting to sweep whatever lay underneath or behind. Although some of the painting's peripheral perspective seems a little odd, the subjects are likely to arouse our sympathy. We either see their efforts at keeping clean their home and nod approvingly, or else we admire them for being more thorough than we would be. Why does dirt build up so quickly? Why is dust so very evidently present everywhere? The last time my home had a ‘proper’ spring clean was in the lockdown of 2020 when I had nothing better to do.

The Christian’s heart needs a spring clean, too. Those accretions of dust (ungodly values, materialism, pride and lust) need the regular attention of a good broom to sweep them all away. Just as dust gathers and piles up without our even noticing, so layers of sin accumulate and form little heaps within us.