Painted glass

“ The fullness and richness of coloring of the glass leaves really nothing to be desired. It is as brilliant, as jewel-like, and at the same time as free from opacity and heaviness, as the best ancient glass; and it is mainly in these respects that it so far excels the productions of other makers of painted glass. The landscape is treated with a pellucid delicacy and accuracy of truth which I have seen very rarely equaled in ancient windows. ”

“ The cutting and putting together of the glass is called glazing, and it is this that gives the window colour; while the enamel work is spoken of as painting, and gives detail, richness, and texture.
I shall presently show that the glazing and painting are really two separate crafts, having separate origins and development, and that stained glass as we know it, or as it should be called in strict accuracy "stained-and-painted" glass, is the product of their union. ”

“ The balance of white and colour is just perfect, and the way the patches of deep colour are embedded, as it were, in grisaille, is skilful in the extreme. To compare them with the futile effort of the eighteenth century, opposite, is to apprehend what can be done in glass, and what cannot. The whole secret of the success of the mere craftsman where the great painter failed, is that he knew what to seek in glass,—colour, brilliancy, decorative breadth. ”

“ But when it comes to the painting of texture and the like, the temptation to use soft colour has generally proved to be irresistible. One is forced to the conclusion that the aim of the later glass painter was entirely wrong; that for the sake of pictorial advantages—which went for very little in a scheme of effective church decoration, even if they did not always detract from the breadth of the work—he gave up the qualities which go at once to make glass glorious, and to give it permanence. Whatever the merits of seventeenth century glass painting they are not the merits of glass ”

“ There is indiscretion, at least, in painting in such a key that only one particular light does justice to your work; but the artist in glass is always very much at the mercy of chance in this respect. He cannot choose the light in which his work shall be seen, and the painter of Châlons may have been more unfortunate than in any way to blame. There comes, however, a degree of heaviness in painted glass about which there can be no discussion. ”

“ He did not even conceive his design as a picture and then translate it into glass. His work runs so smoothly it cannot be translation. The ingenuity with which he leads up little bits of colour in the midst of white, is no mere feat of engineering; it is spontaneous. It is clear that he had the thought of glazing in his mind all along—that he designed for it, in fact. The difference between the thirteenth century and the fifteenth century designer is, that one thinks first of glazing, is primarily a glazier, the other thinks first of painting, is primarily a painter. ”

“ This man possibly did in glass much what he would have done on canvas; but he could never have got such pure, intense, and at the same time luminous, effects of colour in anything but glass, and he knew it, never lost sight of it, and tried to get the most out of what it could best give him—that is to say, purity of colour, and translucency and brilliancy of glass. Whatever amount of pigment he employed (probably more than it seems, the light is so strong in Italy) it seldom appears to do more than just give the needful modelling. ”

“ It is not in the least what a painter understands by painting. It is, in the first place, a means of giving in solid brown pigment, which effectually stops out the light, detail smaller than mere glazing would permit, such as the features of a face or the veining of a leaf: it gives the foils of the foliage, and marks the individual berries in the border overleaf. In the next it is used partially to obscure the glass, so as to give shading. The pigment is not used as colour, but for drawing and shading only. Local colour is represented by the pieces of pot-metal glass employed ”

“ It is not in our churches alone that "storied windows" are so valuable. The new methods of making glass enable the artist to reproduce designs in a free and unconventional manner hitherto impossible with the painted glass. Jewel-work that sparkles in every color and shape is often used in domestic glass with delightful results. ”

“ The severity of the “primitive” painters’ design, the firm outline, the comparatively flat treatment, the brilliant, not yet degraded, colour—all these were qualities which the glass painter could turn to account. Without firm and definite outline, of course, a design does not lend itself to mosaic. But it is especially the early painter’s ideal of colour which was so sympathetic to the glass painter. A designer for glass must be a colourist; but the colour he seeks is sui generis. Not every colourist would make a glass designer. ”

“ If you are bent upon making your glass look like sixteenth century work, you glaze it in squares, and introduce enamel. To treat it mosaically would be not to make it characteristic enough of the period for your pedant, notwithstanding that sixteenth century glass was, by exception, treated in a glazier-like fashion.
Should one, then, it may be asked, take the exception for model? The answer to that is: take the best, and only the best. It is no concern of the artist whether it be exceptional or of every-day occurrence; some kinds of excellence can never be common. ”

“ If, therefore, we want the qualities of deep, rich, luminous and translucent colour, which glass better than any other medium can give, we must resort to the use of pot-metal—that is to say, to glazing—assisted more or less by brown paint, used, not to get colour, but to stop it out, or to tone it down. ”

“ Then it becomes a question of the relative value of, on the one hand, purity and translucency of glass colour, and, on the other, of pictorial qualities. The problem is to get the utmost of modelling or expression with the minimum of obscuration. Much depends upon the method of painting adopted. So long as the light is allowed to get through it, one may indulge in a fair amount of shading, but a deep even tint, leaving none of the glass clear, is inevitably heavy. The more one can represent shadows by deeper tinted glass the more brilliant the result will be. ”

“ Good glass is more than half the battle. Raw glass may be toned down by paint, but poor glass cannot be made rich by it. The Italian glass painters often used crude greens and purples, and softened them with brown. They might do that with comparative safety under an Italian sky; but the deeper tones produced that way have not the purity and lusciousness of juicy pot-metal, and the paint is liable to peel off and betray the poverty of the cheap material. ”

“ According as we value most the qualities of glass in glass, or the qualities of a picture in no matter what material, will our verdict be. But there comes a point when the painter so far oversteps the limit of consistency, so clearly attempts to do in glass what cannot be done in it, so plainly sacrifices to qualities which he cannot get the qualities which stained glass offers him, that he ceases to be any longer working in glass, and is only attempting upon glass what had very much better have been done in some other and more congenial medium. ”

“ Embellished glass is cheaper than stained glass, and does not require a furnace; yet if burned, has the pigment rendered more durable. In England, many wealthy ladies buy traced glass and paints, and color and [Pg 257] shade it. Pictures transferred on glass can be finely finished up and burnt. Painted glass is more brilliant than stained. ”

“ It has [Pg 402] neither the colour of mosaic glass nor the sparkle of grisaille. The white is obscured by masses of heavy paint, which, when the sun shines very brightly behind it, kindles at best into a foxy-brown; and even this is in danger of peeling off, and showing the poverty of the glass it was meant to enrich. Any pictorial effect it might have had is ruined by the leads and bars, which assert themselves in the most uncompromising manner. In short, the qualities of oil painting aimed at are altogether missed, and the facilities which glass offered are not so much as sought. ”

“ Technique.—In many respects the technique of the Renaissance glass painter is only a carrying further of the later Gothic means. He uses more and more white glass, employing it also as a background; he uses more shades of coloured glass, especially pale blues, greens, and purples; he chooses his glass more carefully for specific purposes; he uses more coated glass, and abrades it; he makes greater use of stain, staining upon all manner of colours—ruby, blue, purple, green—and even painting in stain, and picking out high lights upon it in white. He paints delicate work more delicately. ”

“ The choice of glass is a very serious matter. What are called “spoilt” sheets are invaluable. It takes an artist to pick the pieces. But without experience in glass the judgment even of a colourist will often be at fault. Some colours spread [Pg 102] unduly, so that the effect of the juxtaposition of any two is not by any means the same as it would be in painting. It is only by practical experiment that a man learns, for example, how much red will, in conjunction with blue, run into purple, and which shade of either colour best holds its own. ”

“ It is by their aid we get those mosaics of pot-metal, the depth and richness of which to this day, with all our science of chemistry, we cannot approach by any process of enamelling. Moreover, though merely constructional leads, taking a direction contrary to the design, may at times disturb the eye, (they scarcely ever disturb the effect) they add to the richness of the glass in a way its unlearned admirers little dream. ”

“ The painting is admirable, not only in the heads, but in the texture of the men’s cloaks; those cloaks, however, are painted in black paint. When the light is quite favourable they look like velvet; they never look like glass.
There is here the excuse, for what it may be worth, of texture and perhaps other pictorial qualities. Even that is often wanting in seventeenth century work, as when, at S. Jacques, Antwerp, the background to a design in white and stain is glazed in panes of white glass solidly coated with brown paint. ”

“ In reality the lack of beauty, especially apparent in the figure drawing of the early glass painters when reduced to monochrome, taken in conjunction with the magnificent effect of many of the earliest windows (which no colourist has ever yet been known to deny) is proof in itself how entirely their art depended upon colour—colour, it should be added, of a quality quite unapproachable by any other medium than that of translucent glass or actual jewellery. ”

“ You probably know that in making modern stained glass a great deal of paint is used in order to get shading and degrees of color. It was toward the end of the thirteenth century that the old glass-makers began to introduce the use of paint into their windows. First came the grisaille glass, as it was called, where instead of strong reds and blues most of the window was in white painted with scroll work in which a few bits of brilliant stained glass were set like jewels. ”

“ And in the latter half of the sixteenth century it was less and less the custom to take heed of considerations other than pictorial; so that by degrees the translucency of glass was sacrificed habitually to strength of effect depending not so much upon colour, which is the strength of glass, as upon the relief obtained by shadow—just the one quality not to be obtained in glass painting. For the quality of shadow depends upon its transparency ”

“ 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 ”

“ It led by quick and sure degrees to what was to all intents and purposes the collapse of glass painting. Realism of a kind was inevitable when once the painter gained the strength to realise what he saw, but when the glass painter, seeking the strength of actual light and shade, began to rely upon painted shadow for his effects, the case was hopeless. Glass asks to be translucent.
The point of perfection in glass design is not easily to be fixed. ”

“ The freedom from surface paint made possible a limpidity of colour which by contrast makes later painted or enamelled windows seem almost dull. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the only paint used was a brown pigment, which served to delineate features and sometimes to accentuate the folds of garments, etc. We must also remember that as the artist worked with small pieces of glass and therefore used a great many lead lines, all the outlines needed by his picture could be put in with leads, and hence it was only natural that he became very expert in drawing with them. ”

“ A certain exaggeration there is, no doubt, about the action of these earliest figures, a certain brutality of rendering, as there is also a certain barbaric quality in the ornament, and, indeed, in the whole effect; but of its superlative richness there is no manner of doubt. One is even led to speculate, when one compares it with later work, whether a certain barbaric character of design does not go to that unrivalled brilliancy. In the absolute glory of rich colour the very earliest glass has never been equalled. ”