To All Swift Things....... (From Francis Thompson's 'the Hound of Heaven')

Lawrence Andrew Patterson

Lawrence Patterson created this image based on a verse from the 1893 poem "The Hound of Heaven" written by Catholic mystic poet Francis Thompson (English: 1859-1907). The 182-line poem would become his most famous work after his death, though it was published nearly 14 years earlier, and would inspire numerous artistic works from films to visual artworks to novels and other writings, and even the U.S. Superme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka case in favor of desegregation.

The poem meditates on the idea of a loving Christian God pursuing a sinner as he flees from Him; the poem is told by the sinner who hopes to dwell in the comforts of his vices without judgment, not realizing that he will be accepted by God no matter what his position in the world. In the lower margin Patterson wrote out the verse in pencil: "To all swift things for swiftness did I sue / Clung to the whistling mane of every wind." He shows God as a blue hound emerging from Heaven, and the sinner, naked, clinging to his mane.

Lawrence Andrew Patterson, was born on 24 March 1896 in Fresno, California. He attended Fresno High School where he created illustrations for the school’s publications. Patterson joined the US Air Force in 1917 and served in France. After the war he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he studied for two years at the California School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Patterson was then enrolled for two years at the California School of Fine Arts where he studied with Ray Boynton.

In 1927, Patterson and his wife were living in Berkeley, California and he was working as an illustrator. He created full page illustrations and small vignettes for the 1926 edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam published by Johnck and Kibbee, San Francisco. The following year he created fifteen illustrations for the English version of Golden Tales of Anatole France published by Dodd, Mead & Company. Patterson also illustrated Harris Merton Lyons’ The Wind in the Lilacs published in 1929; Richard Middleton’s poem Queen Melanie and the Wood-Boy published in 1931; and Douglas S. Watson’s book West Wind —The Life story of Joseph Reddeford Walker, Knight of the Golden Horseshoe published in 1934.

Lawrence Andrew Patterson enlisted for service for World War II in 1942 and it appears that he served in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He died in San Mateo, California on 3 November 1964.