The Israelites passing through the Wilderness, preceded by the Pillar of Light

The departure of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt is told in the Old Testament book of Exodus. God guided them at night with the light from a pillar of fire. West painted a dramatic night scene, with the light streaming down on tiny figures of Moses and the Israelites. By 1845, such an epic treatment of a biblical subject was old-fashioned and it is the last of the Bristol School's imaginary, Romantic landscapes.It would be twentieth-century film-makers who were to reinvent the epic dramatisation of history with casts of thousands.