Famous Salem painting

Not far from us here at the Oakeley Arms Hotel near Snowdon is one of North Wales’ most well known chapels.

The tiny Baptist chapel in Pentre Gwynfryn near Llanbedr was catapulted into fame in the early twentieth century by English artist Sydney Curnow Vosper. In 1908 he completed his most famous work Salem. Vosper became interested in Welsh life and culture after he married Constance James, a girl from Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales.

Salem is a melancholy portrait of Siân Owen, a 70 year old lady from the village in traditional Welsh costume with the scene of Sunday worship at the chapel as her backdrop. Vosper exhibited the painting in London and soon after it was bought by Lord Leverhulme for 100 guineas, a huge sum at the time.

Salem was later used in a Lever Brother’s Sunlight Soap promotion – tokens were printed onto soap boxes which could be exchanged for a copy of the painting. This was a time of great poverty and austerity for most working people in Britain and few homes could afford such luxuries as paintings or art. The Lever Brother’s promotion meant that copies of Vosper’s painting of a rural Welsh church had pride of place in homes up and down the country.

As well as being considered a charming reproduction of a fast disappearing way of rural Welsh life, Vosper’s painting gained notoriety because it was believed that an image of the devil could be seen in the Siân’s shawl. And, it was claimed, if you could spot the devil straight away then this was a sure sign that the devil was lurking in you.

Can you spot the devil?

Capel Salem still stands today. Not a lot has changed along the narrow lanes and wooded hillsides; it looks the same as it did when Vosper first caught a glimpse of it over 100 years ago, and remains a testament to a long-lost way of rural living when a Sunday church service was central to a good, wholesome week.

And this remarkable painting is on display at the Gwynedd Museum and Art Gallery in Bangor. The painting, usually kept at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight has been lent to the Bangor Gallery for the exhibition. The painting is on display until October 2013.