Rev. R. J. Campbell

Four rapid charcoal-and-wash studies — captioned Studies from memory. REV. R. J. CAMPBELL. 1904 — show the Congregationalist minister Reginald John Campbell at his pulpit in City Temple, London. Leslie Ward ('Spy') departs here from his usual single polished chromolithograph, offering instead a sequence of gestural poses: arms outstretched in preaching fervour, head tilted in profile, leaning forward in earnest address. Campbell was a sensation — a handsome, progressive clergyman whose 'New Theology' drew vast crowds and fierce controversy, accused of near-pantheism by orthodox Nonconformists. Ward's loose, unfinished quality suits a man whose ideas were equally unsettled. The physiognomy is treated with the same lean, romantic idealism Ward applied to fashionable public men of his era.