Lewis Foreman Day

“ Of late years each country has been learning so much from the others that the newest effort is very much in one direction. It seems to be agreed that the art of the window-maker begins with glazing, that the all-needful thing is beautiful glass, that painting may be reduced to a minimum, and on occasion (thanks to new developments in the making of glass) dispensed with altogether. A tendency has developed itself in the direction not merely of mosaic, but of carrying the glazier’s art farther than has been done before and rendering landscapes and even figure subjects in unpainted glass. ”

“ And, apart from particular instances, we have only to look at the best Late Gothic work to see that it is informed by the new spirit, and at fine Renaissance glass to observe how it conforms to Gothic traditions of workmanship. ”

“ In Italy, where glass painting was not much practised, and it seems to have been the custom either to import glass painters as they were wanted or to get work done abroad, it may well be that designs were supplied by artists more or less distinguished. Ghiberti and Donatello may have had a hand in the cartoons for the windows of the Duomo at Florence; but it is not to any sculptor that we can give the entire credit of design so absolutely in the spirit of colour decoration. ”

“ To what extent design was affected by national temperament it is not easy to say. The marked divergence of the Flemish from the French treatment of glass in the 16th century is not entirely due to a preference on the one part for colour and on the other for light and shade, but is partly owing to the circumstance that, whilst in France design remained in the hands of craftsmen, whose trade was glass painting, in the Netherlands it was entrusted by the emperor to his court painter, who concerned himself as little as possible with a technique of which he knew nothing. ”

“ An interesting development of Renaissance design was the framing of pictures in golden-yellow arabesque ornament, scarcely architectural enough to be called canopywork, and reminiscent rather of beaten goldsmith’s work than of stone carving. ”

“ If in France we come also upon the names of well-known artists, they seem, like Jean Cousin, to have been closely connected with glass painting: they designed so like glass painters that they might have begun their artistic career in the workshop.
The attribution of fine windows to famous artists should not be too readily accepted; for, though it is a foible of modern times to father whatever is noteworthy upon some great name, the masterpieces of medieval art are due to unknown craftsmen. ”

“ It was the period of more naturalistic design; and a touch of nature is more easily appreciated than architectural fitness. Middle Gothic glass, halting as it does between the relatively rude mosaic of early times and the painter-like accomplishment of fully-developed glass painting, has not the salient merits of either. In the matter of tone also it is intermediate between the deep, rich, sober harmonies of Early windows and the lighter, brighter, gayer colouring of later glass. Now for the first time grisaille ornament and coloured figurework were introduced into the same window. ”

“ Glass was never at the best a pleasant surface to paint on; and glass painting, following the line of least resistance, developed in the later Gothic and early Renaissance periods into something unlike any other form of painting. ”

“ But the fact remains that heavy painting obscured the glass, that shadows rendered in opaque surface-colour lacked translucency, and that in seeking before all things the effects of shadow and relief, glass painters of the 17th century fell short of the qualities on the one hand of glass and on the other of painting. ”

“ The pictorial ambition of the glass painter, active from the first, was kept for centuries within the bounds of decoration. Medallion subjects were framed in ornament, standing figures in canopywork, and pictures were conceived with regard to the window and its place in architecture. Severity of treatment in design may have been due more to the limitations of technique than to restraint on the part of the painter. ”

“ The lower the melting point of the powdered glass the more easily it is fused. The painter is consequently inclined to use enamel of which the contraction and expansion is much greater than that of his glass—with the result that, under the action of the weather, the colour is apt to work itself free and expose the bare white glass beneath. The only enamel which has held its own is that of the Swiss glass-painters of the 16th and 17th centuries. The domestic window panes they painted may not in all cases have been tried by the sudden changes of atmosphere to which church windows are subject ”

“ The growing desire to get more and more light into the churches, and the consequent manufacture of purer and more transparent glass, affected the glazier’s colour scheme. For all that, the fashion of a window was, mutatis mutandis, that of the painting, carving, embroidery, goldsmith’s work, enamel and other craftsmanship of the period. The design of an ivory triptych is very much that of a three-light window. There is a little enamelled shrine of German workmanship in the Victoria and Albert Museum which might almost have been designed for glass ”

“ Towards the 14th century, when Gothic design took a more naturalistic direction, the desire to get something like modelling made it necessary to carry painting farther, and they got rid to some extent of the ill effect of shading-colour smeared on the glass by stippling it. ”

“ It has been argued that each separate light of a window ought to be complete in itself. On the other hand it has proved possible to make due acknowledgment of architectural conditions without cramping design in that way. There can be no doubt as to the variety and breadth of treatment gained by accepting the whole window as field for a design. ”

“ The entire surface of the glass was coated with an even “matt” of pale brown; this was allowed to dry; and then the high lights were rubbed off, and the modelling was got by scrubbing away the paint with a dry hog-hair brush, more or less, according to the gradations required. Perfect modelling was got by repeating the operation—how often depended upon the dexterity of the painter. A painter’s method is partly the outcome of his individuality. One man would float on his colour and manipulate it to some extent in the moist state ”

“ But apart from the fact that the design proves in this case to be even more effective with the light upon it, the use of gold leaf in the tesserae confirms the presumption that this work, which (supposing it to be genuine) would be Byzantine, centuries earlier than any coloured windows that we know of, and entirely different from them in technique, is rather a specimen of fused mosaic that happens to be translucent than part of a window designedly executed in tesserae. ”

“ Moreover, the recognition of the artistic position of craftsmen in general makes it possible for a man to devote himself to glass without sinking to the rank of a mechanic; and artists begin to realize the scope glass offers them. ”

“ Early Victorian doings are interesting only as marking the steps of recovery (cf. the work of T. Willement in the choir of the Temple church; of Ward and Nixon, lately removed from the south transept of Westminster Abbey; of Wailes) . Better things begin with the windows at Westminster inspired by A. C. Pugin, who exercised considerable influence over his contemporaries. John Powell (Hardman & Co.) was an able artist content to walk, even after that master’s death, reverently in his footsteps. ”

“ There would be no advantage in building up whole windows in this way; but for the rendering of the flesh and sundry minute details in a window for the most part heavily leaded, this fusing together of tesserae, and even of little pieces of glass cut carefully to shape, seems to supply the want of something more in keeping with severe mosaic glazing than painted flesh proves to be.
Glass painters are allowed to-day a freer hand than formerly. They are no longer exclusively engaged upon ecclesiastical work; domestic glass is an important industry ”

“ When, however, it comes to the representation of the human face, the limitations of simple lead-glazing are at once apparent. A possible way out of the difficulty was shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1900 by M. Tournel, who, by fusing together coloured tesserae on to larger pieces of colourless glass, anticipated the discovery of the already mentioned fragment of Byzantine mosaic now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. ”

“ The following is a classified list of some of the most characteristic and important windows, omitting for the most part isolated examples, and giving by preference the names of churches where there is a fair amount of glass remaining; the country in which at each period the art throve best is put first. ”

“ Modern facilities of manufacture make possible many things which were hitherto out of the question. Enamel colours are richer; their range is extended; and it may be possible, with the improved kilns and greater chemical knowledge we possess, to make them hold permanently fast. ”