Literature:
Dominique Marechal, Collectie Frank Brangwyn, Stedelijke Musea, Bruges,
1987, p. 178;  The Way of the Cross. An Interpretation by Frank
Brangwyn RA with a Commentary by Libby Horner, Auad Publishing, San
Francisco, 2008; Cat. 14, Frank Brangwyn, Stations of the Cross, Liss Fine Art 2015, page 26.  

In 1934 Brangwyn completed a set of
Stations of the Cross, the
original designs drawn in outline on tracing paper and transferred to
zinc plates from which the lithographs were printed. The tracing-paper
design was transferred to the plate by rubbing the back of the paper
with chalk and then retracing the outline of the image. Following this,
Brangwyn would have added the detail to the plate, including shading
and the folds of the costumes, using lithographic crayon.

Sixteen
sets of the Stations were printed on paper and a further three sets on
sycamore (an experiment intended to produce a lithograph that would be
more durable in a damp church interior). The images were additionally
published in a reduced format by Hodder and Stoughton as a book entitled
The
Way of the Cross: An Interpretation by Frank Brangwyn (London 1935),
with a commentary by G.K. Chesterton, who enthused that Brangwyn was
surely one of the most masculine of modern men of genius’ (p. 11).
In
his commentary on the eighth station, which G.K. Chesterton felt was
pivotal, he observed that Christ lifts His head, looks sharply over His
shoulder, and His eyes shine with defiance and almost with fury. And
that one flash of fierceness is shot back at the Women of Jerusalem
weeping over Him.’

The model for the little boy in the foreground –
who adds a poignant contemporary touch to the composition – was
probably a villager called Barry Cox though Donald Sinden, the famous actor, also  modelled for
Brangwyn as a boy.

We are grateful to Dr Libby Horner for her assistance (Eighth Station is no.S1903 in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné).