4. Swedenborg and Enigmatic Pictures

Rimmer was a non-denominational Christian who typically did not attend church, but, rather, he developed his own religious ideas. These included an acceptance of Emanuel Swedenborg's anti-Catholicism and a belief in much of Swedenborg's accounts of visits to celestial spheres. A number of Rimmer's works of art, such as Victory and Interior: Before the Picture, are explored here for the first time within the context of Swedenborg's writings. As an independently minded artist, he benefited from his own theological exploration. As his paintings of Horses at a Fountain and The Gamblers, Plunderers of Castile (or his drawing of Job's despair with a prominent role given to Elihu) showed, he went beyond the Bible to use relatively esoteric sources. Frequently there is a complex moral message in his work that is not immediately apparent but always depends upon visual clues.