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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. If in France we come also upon the names of well known
artists, they seem, like lean 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.
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. The employment of artists not
connected with glass design would go far to explain the great
difference of Italian glass from that of other countries. The 14thcentury
work at Assisi is more correctly described as “ Trecento ”
than as Gothic, and the “ Quattrocento ” windows at Florence
are as different as could be from Perpendicular work. One
compares them instinctively with Italian paintings, not with
glass elsewhere. And so with the 15th-century Italian glass.
The superb r6th-century windows of William of Marseilles at
Arezzo, in which painting is carried to the furthest point possible
short of sacrificing the pure quality of glass, are more according
to contemporary French technique. Both French and Italian
influence may be traced in Spanish glass (Avila, Barcelona,
Burgos, Granada, Leon, Seville, Toledo). Some of it is said to
have been executed in France. If so it must have been done to
Spanish order. The coarse effectiveness of the design, the
strength of the colour, the general robustness of the art, are
characteristically Spanish; and nowhere this side of the Pyrenees
do we find detail on a scale so enormous.
We have passed by, in following the progressive course of
craftsmanship, some forms of design, peculiar to no one period
but very characteristic of glass. The “ quarry window, ” barely
referred to, its diamond-shaped or oblong panes painted, richly
bordered, relieved by bosses of coloured ornament often heraldic,
is of constant occurrence. Entire windows, too, were from
first to last given up to heraldry. The “ Jesse window ” occurs
in every style. According to the fashion of the time the “ Stem
of Iesse ” burst out into conventional foliage, vine branches
or arbitrary scroll work. It appealed to the designer by the
scope it gave for freedom of design. He found vent, again,
for fantastic imagination in the representation of the “Last
Judgment, ” to which the west window was commonly devoted.
And there are other schemes in which he delighted; but this
is not the place to dwell upon them.
The glass of the I7th century does not count for much. Some
of the best in England is the Work of the Dutch van Linge family
(Wadham and Balliol Colleges, Oxford). What glass painting
came to in the 18th century is nowhere better to be seen than in
the great west window of the ante-chapel at New College, Oxford.
That is all Sir Ioshua Reynolds and the best china painter of
his day could do between them. The veryidea of employing a
china painter shows how entirely the art of the glass painter had
died out.
It re-awoke in England with the, Gothic revival of the rgth
century; and the Gothic revival determined the direction
modern glass should take. 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 artis t content to walk, even after that master's death,
reverently in his footsteps. Charles Winston, whose Hints
on Glass Painting was the first real contribution towards the
understanding of Gothic glass, and who, by the aid of the Powells
(of Whitefriars) succeeded in getting something very like the
texture and colour of old glass, was more learned in ancient
ways of workmanship than appreciative of the art resulting
from them. (He is responsible for the Munich glass in Glasgow
cathedral.) So it was that, except for here and there a window
entrusted by exception to W. Dyce, E. Poynter, D. G. Rossetti,
Ford Madox Brown or E. Burne-jones, glass, from the beginning
of its recovery, fell into the hands of men with a strong bias
towards archaeology. The architects foremost in the Gothic
revival (W. Butterfield, Sir G. Scott, G. E. Street, &c.) were all
inclined that way; and, as they had the placing of commissions
for windows, they controlled the policy of glass painters.
Designers were constrained to work in the pedantically archaeological
manner prescribed by architectural fashion. Unwillingly
as it may have been, they made mock-medieval windows, the
interest in which died with the popular illusion about a Gothic
revival. But they knew their trade; and when an artist like
John Clayton (master of a whole school of later glass painters)
took a window in hand (St Augustine's, Kilburn; Truro cathedral;
King's College Chapel, Cambridge) the result was a work of art
from which, trade work as it may in a sense be, we may gather
what such men might have done had they been left free to follow
their own artistic impulse. It is necessary to refer to this because
it is generally supposed that whatever is best in recent glass is
due to the romantic movement. The charms of Burne-]ones's
design and of William Morris's colour, place the windows done
by them among the triumphs of modern decorative art; but
Morris was neither foremost in the reaction, nor quite such a
master of the material he was working in as he showed himself
in less exacting crafts. Other artists to be mentioned in connexion
with glass design are: Clement Heaton, Bayne, N. H. I.
Westlake and Henry Holiday, not to speak of a younger generation
of able men.
Foreign work shows, as compared with English, a less just
appreciation of glass, though the foremost draughtsmen of
their day were enlisted for its design. In Germany, King Louis
of Bavaria employed P. von Cornelius and W. von Kaulbach
(Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, Glasgow); in France the Bourbons
employed ]. A. D. Ingres, F. V. E. Delacroix, Vernet and ]. H.
Flandrin (Dreux); and the execution of their designs was
entrusted to the most expert painters to be procured at Munich
and Sevres; but all to little effect. They either used potmetal
glass of poor quality, or relied upon enamel-with the result
that their colour lacks the qualities of glass. Where it is not
heavy with paint it is thin and crude. In Belgium happier
results were obtained. In the chapel of the Holy Sacrament at
Brussels there is one window by ]. B. Capronnier not unworthy
of the fine series by B. van Orley which it supplements. At the
best, however, foreign artists failed to appreciate the quality
of glass; they put better draughtsmanship into their windows
than English designers of the mid-Victorian era, and painted
them better; but they missed the glory of translucent colour.
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. It was years ago demonstrated
at Sevres how a picture may be painted in colours upon
a sheet of plate-glass measuring 4 ft. by 2% ft. We are now no
doubt in a position to produce windows painted on much larger
sheets. But the results achieved, technically wonderful as they
are, hardly warrant the waste of time and labour upon work so
costly, so fragile, so lacking in the qualities of a picture on the
one hand and of glass on the other.
In America, John la Farge, finding European material not<noinclude>{{smallrefs}}</div></noinclude>