British and Irish stained glass (1811–1918)
Within 50 years of the beginnings of commercial manufacture in the 1830s, British stained glass grew into an enormous and specialised industry, with important centres in Newcastle upon Tyne, Birmingham, Whitechapel in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Norwich and Dublin.
Most of the glass in this remarkable window is older than the 15th-century stone tracery that contains it, the figure of Adam being part of a series of Ancestors of Christ that are among the oldest surviving panels in England.
The "Five Sisters", although repaired countless times so that they now contain a spider's web of lead, still reveal their delicate pattern of simple geometric shapes enhanced by grisaille painting.
The west window, designed in about 1340 by Master Robert, contains tiers of saints and stories of Christ and the Virgin Mary, each surmounted by a delicate Gothic canopy in white and yellow-stain, against a red background.
Between them, the windows of York and Canterbury cathedrals provided the examples for different styles of windows—geometric patterns, floral motifs and borders, narratives set in small panels, rows of figures, major thematic schemes.
Few things were considered more romantic than a medieval ruin which conjured up images of the traditional "romances" or idealistic sagas of the Middle Ages.
Thus it was that many of England's nobility grew up in homes that included within their structure part the Gothic remains of an ancient church or its associated monastic buildings.
Among the earliest of these creations was the novelist Horace Walpole's refurbishing of his London villa, which gave its name to the pretty and somewhat superficial style of architectural decoration known as Strawberry Hill Gothick.
The movement gained impetus- Sir Walter Scott built himself a Scottish Baronial mansion, Abbotsford; the castles of Warwick, Arundel and Windsor were refurbished by their owners.
The movement was just as strong in Germany where "Mad" King Ludwig II of Bavaria indulged his medievalism by building the Disneyland icon of Neuschwanstein.
In The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851–1853), he discussed the moral, social and religious implications of buildings, emphasising the desirability of an ethical approach to the practice of the arts.
To this end he formed a business partnership with Marshall and Faulkner, employing Ford Madox Brown, another highly creative and dynamic artist and thus began what is termed "the Arts and Crafts Movement".
They did not reproduce earlier forms exactly, and because of disagreements with the philosophy of the Cambridge Camden Society, rarely created stained glass windows for ancient churches.
The Aesthetic Movement was a reaction against both the works of industry and the influential Socialist and Christian idealism of Morris and Ruskin who both saw art as directly linked to morality.
He worked with and employed other designers and was instrumental in encouraging the firm of John Hardman and Co. of Birmingham to turn their attention to the production of glass.
After the destruction by fire of the Houses of Parliament in 1834, Barry had won the commission for their rebuilding, the stipulation being that they should be in the Gothic style, as the most significant part of the Medieval complex, the Great Hall of Westminster, remained standing.
The rebuilding, which took up the rest of Barry's life, included a vast array of arts and crafts of all kinds, not the least of which was stained glass windows, both pictorial and armorial.
To Sir Gilbert fell the task of restoration of many of England's finest Medieval structures including Salisbury, Worcester, Chester, Ely and Durham Cathedrals.
In 1847 he published an influential book on its styles and production, including a translation from Theophilus' On Diverse Arts, the foremost Medieval treatise on painting, stained glass and metalwork, written in the early 12th century.
Winston observed that windows of medieval glass appeared more luminous than those of early 19th-century production, and set his mind to discovering why this was the case.
From studying Medieval windows, particularly those at Canterbury Cathedral, many stained glass artists became adept at designing foliage and decorative borders that reproduce archaeological originals.
Set against a background of geometry, quarries or foliage, the small painted incidents within rondels and quatrefoils are nearly always conservatively academic in their appearance, with figures based on those in engravings of works by admired painters, Raphael, Titian, Andrea del Sarto and Perugino.
Often in the case of windows with ornate foliage, the archaeologically correct surrounds are at variance with the style of the rondels which make no attempt to reproduce the medieval.
The Arts and Crafts style lent itself to the depiction of solidly working-class apostles and virtues set against backgrounds of quarries that resemble glazed earthenware tiles.
Narratives that emphasised hard labour, human decency and charitable love were the themes that lent themselves to enthusiastic treatment by Morris and Ford Madox Brown.
In line with the naturalistic drafting of the figures, there is a pictorial emphasis on depicting human interaction and response, often with detailed facial expressions and rather flamboyant gestures.
The clothing of the figures is often of the darker shades, royal blue, wine red and dark green and is lined or bordered with intricately decorated yellow-stained glass.
Aestheticism The Aesthetic Movement included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones, the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley and writer Oscar Wilde.
The artists had developed ways of achieving every possible textural effect through the expert application of ground-glass paint and yellow-stain:- babies’ ringlets, old men's beards, silk brocade, dove's feather, ripe grapes, gold braid, glowing pearls and greasy sheep's wool could all be painted to realistic perfection by any number of studios.
The youthful Virgin of the Annunciation, Peter the fisherman, John the itinerant preacher and Joseph the carpenter are all depicted in robes of the most sumptuous nature, lined with cloth of gold and lavishly decorated at the edges with rubies and pearls.
