John Hoare Kerr in St. Benet’s dorm in 1946

It is not often that the person chosen for this monthly series on “Artists of the Abbey” also happens to have been an Oblate of St. Benedict. One notable example of this occurred three years ago, in January 2022, when we featured the artwork of oblate Adelaide de Bethune (1914-2002). Like Ade, this month’s artist is also buried here at Portsmouth in our monastic cemetery. Much of the ongoing inspiration for this exploration of artists came from our renewal of efforts undertaken by Fr. Damian Kearney and librarian Roberta Stevens to fully process and archive the sprawling collection of artwork over which the monks have ownership and stewardship. The idea of highlighting the artists represented throughout our community history became a regular feature of the “The Current.” Their creations span centuries, grace the indoors and the outdoors of the monastic grounds, and represent work in a wide variety of media.

Saint Michael, by John Hoare KerrBased on recent research made in the monastery archives, this month’s featured artist seems to have worked primarily on paper. He attended Portsmouth Abbey School and received his B.A. from Yale University in 1955. His full name, as incised into his slate tombstone, is John Hoare M.-F. Kerr, Esq., O.O.S.B. (Oblate of the Order of St. Benedict). The “M.-F.” refers to his oblate names, Michael-Francis, taken at his first Promise of Oblation. Born in 1931, he died in 2007 at age 76. Abbot Michael’s homilies for the Christmas Masses, both at midnight and at the following morning, confirmed my interest in presenting John Hoare Kerr, as I was reminded of one particular 1988 drawing in our collection. Kerr had titled it “The Icon of St. Michael the Archangel as a Super Hero.” Abbot Michael had critiqued super-heroic metaphors whereby some see Mary as “a pious version of Wonder Woman,” and had reminded us that “Jesus was not Superman.” In his self-typewritten essay affixed to the reverse of the icon’s frame, the artist Kerr explains that, “Superheroes today are like Knights of Old, costumed for showing power over evil by good and virtue. St. Michael is seen in this icon almost as a comic book hero, a Super Hero, as indeed he is, having on God’s command cast Satan into Hell in the first battle in history before even time began.” In his essay label, Kerr explains the translation of the name Michael: “In Hebrew Michael means: Who is like God?” Curiously, this phrase also appears in Latin at the top of his gravestone: Quis ut Deus.
​Headstone of John Hoare Kerr in monastic cemetery​​​​​Kerr’s essay also provides some autobiographical notes that seem to reveal a reflective bent: “The artist studied at the Art Students League in NYC, at the Boston Museum School, and at Yale School of Fine Arts, and has been a senior U.S. Cultural Diplomat in India, an official of the National Endowment for the Arts, a museum curator and Director, and is in the last stage of life, old age, a time Hindu thought suggests one withdraw to a life as a sanyasi... much like a hermit. Few of us can, but we try to be closer to God all our lives. This motivated the drawing.” Another Latin motto, adapted from a family motto going back to Scotland, is carved towards the bottom of his headstone: Sero sed semper serio, or “Late, but always in earnest.” Kerr was keenly interested in his family’s genealogy which is traced as the Kerr Clan in the Scottish Borders in the 14th century.
John Hoare Kerr with his sons (Colin, Alan, and Ian)It was possibly Kerr who added the word semper to the original clan motto of Sero sed serio. His father was the noted Brigadier General Francis Rusher Kerr, U.S. Army, born in Newport in 1890, which was also the place of his death in 1975. He is buried at West Point. John’s marriage in 1961 to Aletheia Nevius Reeves produced three sons: Ian Angus Nevius MacDonald Kerr, Colin Andrew MacKinnon Van Kirk Kerr, and Alan Alasdair MacMillan-Gates Kerr, whom he described as “a true Border descendant in that he lives on horseback when he and his brothers are home on vacation.” According to Kerr, “Alan and his brothers are the 13th or 14th generation of the family to live at Newport and New York City.” The family’s Newport estate, Derrydown, was later altered to Derrydown Hermitage by Kerr in later years, after he had become an oblate of the Abbey.

While Kerr’s artistry remained more an avocation than profession, this career diplomat’s drawings represent yet another link in the artistic chain connecting our spiritual community over the generations.

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