phantom choral snake: Choirs in art over the centuries

Okay, a bit of a sideline, but it's interesting sometimes to stand back and see how the rest of the world sees us singers. Here is a whirlwind tour in 3 short sections of how choirs have been portrayed in paintings over the centuries. Given how popular singing is as a pastime the main surprise is how few paintings there actually are. Opera singers and singers performing solos or duets with attendant pianos or small groups of instruments get a bit of a look in, but poor old choirs - blink and you'll miss them.

Phase 1 - the heavenly choir:
Whizzing back to medieval times everything was so simple. Choirs existed to sing in praise of God, so naturally they might as well be angels. Here from the early 15th century is a lovely example from an alterpiece by Jan van Eyck.

Phase 2 - the rowdy / disobedient / inattentive choir:
Suddenly post-Renaissance choirs became human, with all of the faults you would expect to see magnified a hundred fold in cartoons and paintings covering this topic, right up to the start of the twentieth century. Typical examples from the 19th century include 'A Village Choir' by Thomas Webster (not shown) and the painting below by the lesser known Auguste Joseph Trupheme called simply 'The Choir Lesson'. At least in this one some of the boys are actually singing.

Phase 3 - the blobby semi-abstract choir:
The last hundred years or so have seen 'serious' paintings of choirs disappear even further into the undergrowth. What we seem to be left with now is individual choirs commissioning paintings of themselves, which invariably veer towards colourful semi-abstract (or at least vague and blobby) portrayals. The final example, below, is one such item produced on demand by a local artist to show my own choir, Oxford Harmonic Society, in all its glory, performing amid the neo-Baroque splendours of Oxford Town Hall. And yes, I am in there somewhere (probably back row towards the right) but I can't say it's a good likeness.