Read Ebook: Stained Glass Windows: An Essay: With a Report to the Vestry on Stained Glass Windows for Grace Church Lockport New York by Faber William Frederic

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This miserable travesty did not long hold sway, it was scarcely permitted to go its own theoretical length. There came great political changes, great religious changes, and for a long time few churches more were built, nor even those standing kept in repair. The course of Ecclesiastical Architecture suffered an interruption for several centuries, of which Mr. Ralph Adams Cram has told us feelingly in his recent writings on that subject.

But within the memory of men now living there has also come the beginning of a true revival. The awakening of the Catholic spirit in the Anglican Communion has been accompanied by an eager desire to recover lost treasures and to restore sound traditions to their former honor.

And naturally all this has shown itself in the cultivation of Stained Glass also. As we have said, what is needed above all else is knowledge, to guide us to what is really good and worthy.

No sooner is any want of the public made evident than enterprising trade springs up to supply that want. If you want colored church windows, you can have them to-day at a trifle per square yard by purchasing a beautifully printed paper, of genuine ecclesiastical design, and pasting it upon your present windows. From this most abysmal horror of vulgarity you may pass through various successive gradations of so-called stained glass, all supplied by trade. If you pass on to the costliest, you are not thereby sure to obtain what is not horrible and vulgar, when regarded from the point of view of true Stained Glass, of Architectural Art, and of Religion.

There are at this moment three rather diverse schools of Stained Glass most in evidence before those who seek and are willing to pay for honest art work; the English, the German, and the American. Their comparative merits are nowhere, to our knowledge, presented in a fair minded way; the makers of each claim superior excellence for their own, of course; if, indeed, they ever intimate to the public that there is any other kind at all. It should be said, however, that there is great merit in the best examples of each school; and that none of these schools can fairly be judged by the inferior stuff which is put out under its name, for each of them is defamed by such stuff.

The English school naturally had, and still has, great prestige among Churchmen. Taking it at its best, as for instance in the work of Mr. Henry Holiday, it is simple and vigorous in drawing, varied and harmonious in color, churchly in spirit, while free from mediaevalism. The English artist believes in stained glass, glass which has its color within itself; and good glass, the best he can obtain. His glass is flat, that is, of even surface and equal thickness. He believes in painting upon this glass, and upon, one may say, every piece and bit of it; but he does not paint a color upon it, he simply shades it, draws folds of drapery, patterns of fabrics, details of ornamentations; always, however, aiming to leave it, however much so painted, with the color of the glass gleaming and glittering: that is, he does not daub over the surface, but puts on mere lines, and picks out lights, so that his painted piece of green glass, let us say, is still green glass, only with design upon it, or texture, or light and shade. He feels that only in this way has he done all which as an artist he is conscientiously bound to do; and he accounts a piece of mere stained glass which has not felt the brush at all, which has not had the touch of the conscious art of the maker, a poor thing, in a sort, crude and barbaric.

In the hands of a master--and there have been great masters in the English school--the results of this method have been very fine. But even so the fact remains that every line and every particle of even neutral pigment upon the surface of glass obscures so much light; which is to say, it detracts so much from its brilliancy and splendor. The fact is undeniable that the total effect of some great window of this school will be charming, but withal just a little dull; the richness which gleams and glitters from it is yet half hidden as by some fluttering veil before it. Such work at its best is exquisite; it is devotional; it is soothing; but hardly gives one a thrill of gladness. In the hands of a master, it is a fit medium for strong individuality of a good kind, as witness Burne-Jones' windows executed at the works of William Morris. In the hands of the common multitude of English makers, it degenerates into a wearisome, conventional repetition of stiff figures, draped in the same damask stuffs, with the same wooden little flowers growing up around their feet, the whole surrounded by the same easily managed conventional border.

Of the German glass, commonly called Munich glass, it is sufficient for our purpose to say that it is in principle the same as the English. It relies much upon the brush. It is more in the mediaeval spirit than the English; its feeling is that of a simply traditional, not a modern, devoutness. Its inspiration is Italian. Its colors are more predominatingly the old primary colors. Its decorative features are strictly conventional, and applied in a mechanical spirit. In warmth, in splendor of color, German windows at their best are superior to the English.

American glass is not simply glass made in America. The term denotes a new method, which yet is, in the main, a restoration of the very oldest method, reinforced on its own lines by modern resources. Mr. John La Farge is its distinguished pioneer.

The earliest glass was not glass of even surface and equal thickness. Therein lies one of its charms.

Needless to say, the American school has its dangers. The ease with which an ignorant eye may be imposed upon by great pieces of folded glass instead of conscientiously selected and leaded strips and pieces, is a snare, into which it is not necessary for an honest artist to fall. When, however, a customer demands something cheap, he can obtain it in so-called American glass, and it will be cheap enough. There has been also a deplorable tendency among some prominent American glass makers toward startling theatrical effects. Of unchurchly windows, windows hopelessly and utterly unchurchly, the great majority doubtless are of the American school; nor are they the windows which have cost the least money. Novel and indescribable colors, as far removed as possible from all sober, reverent, devotional feeling, have been employed; effects have been sought which actually destroy all the value of the window as what it was designed by its architect, a window in a sacred edifice. And by the wide heralding of such performances, as if American glass meant simply this sort of thing, American glass has forfeited that just appreciation which in its essential principles it so richly merits. Let the American school remember that a window in a church is and forever must remain just a window, subservient that is, to the architecture of the church; let it design in the spirit of worshipful, reverent, dignified, sober devotion; let it compose with technical conscientiousness and love its leads and spare no labor; let it choose thoroughly good glass, and glass of predominantly the glorious colors so long honorable, eschewing startling and meretricious effects: and there will, to our mind, be no doubt of its being the Stained Glass of the future.

But, to our thinking, one thing cannot safely be done; and that is the placing of English and American, or Munich and American glass side by side in the same building. Let it be the one or the other; when you have chosen which it shall be, adhere to that. To mingle the schools in the same edifice will be sure to prove fatal to the best effects of each.

And before placing any permanent stained glass, again let us say, study the subject; see all the windows you can; and make haste slowly.

STAINED GLASS WINDOWS

For Grace Church, Lockport.

A Report to the Vestry of the Parish by its Rector, January 5, 1897.

After many months of inquiry, reflection, special study, and such visits to churches as opportunity afforded, we are at last in a position to bring together the facts bearing upon this important project, and to submit the results for your consideration.

Grace Church, Lockport, is an edifice which though not striking or ornate, is in point of architectural merit, of conspicuous importance in the community, in probable permanence and enduring interest second to none in our city. Erected more than forty years ago, of stone, its interior chastely beautified and enriched at successive periods; its nave alone over one hundred feet long, forty-six feet wide, fifty feet high; its lofty chancel with a window twenty-two feet in height, nearly ten feet in width: it impresses the educated eye on entering it as beautiful and churchly, characterized by simple grace and reverent dignity, and the exclusion of the tawdry and incongruous. We may honestly admit some faults. What building, religious or other, is without them? But it is a church which grows upon us the longer we worship in it; it becomes homelike to us, and yet excites our admiration the more as we become better acquainted with it.

The design was one of Richard Upjohn's.

This is the building which is committed to our care. Not only that we keep it clean and in repair, warmed and lighted, not only that we preserve the fabric as a valuable piece of property; but that continuing to labor in the spirit of those who have preceded us, we secure such further additions to it as will tend to make it complete in its kind.

We say, complete in its kind. And it is our sacred duty, therefore, to understand what it is that we already have, as well as to ask what further gifts and further embellishments might add thereto. For to add, with the best intention and with lavish generosity, but without an understanding of the conditions and limitations imposed by the existing edifice, might easily result in such disastrous incongruity as a future generation, if not ours, would deplore. The land is full of warning examples, and one is at times appalled to think of the vast sums embodied in worse than waste, from which our better educated descendants after us will suffer in the years to come. Knowledge is bound to grow; travel and study cannot fail to make an understanding of these things the common property of intelligent Church people as time goes on. And it is a grave responsibility to be at the head of a parish in which permanent work is undertaken and executed, work on which the future is to pronounce judgment. This responsibility, let me add, your rector for one feels very seriously and deeply.

A very common form of architectural enrichment in this day of growing wealth and of increasing commemoration of the departed is that of stained glass windows. No memorial can be more beautiful than this when wisely planned and well executed. None can be much more painful or incessantly offensive when inartistic, incongruous, or lacking in the true devotional spirit.

And as touching our own case, it is reasonably certain that offers will be made to place such windows in Grace Church. It would be ungenerous to decline them. Moreover, we cannot escape the moral obligation of directing what such memorials shall be, so far as the building itself, its style of architecture, its uses, and its history, shall impose the conditions. It is not a question of dictating to intending donors: for the vestry to decline to exercise such control would be for us to fail of a sacred trust.

Our church, we may be most thankful to bear in mind, is built in a style pure and self-consistent, plain as it is. It is Early English, of the first and simplest of the periods of Gothic. To treat it as if it were of some other style, in any changes or additions we might see fit to make hereafter, would be to do violence to the edifice, to wrong its intelligent and loving builders in the days of good Bishop De Lancey, and those who shall inherit it after we are gone. There is meaning and purpose in it, as it is: in every line of it, in every arch, every dimension, every grouping and distribution of parts.

We are not at liberty, therefore, to change the window openings, in size or form, unless indeed we wish to rebuild the church. We may at our taste reconstruct the windows in the houses in which we live, but we cannot alter the style of these windows without destroying the style of the architecture. The series of long narrow lancets, no matter how long or how narrow, are right; and with all their severe simplicity, their beauty of outline and their grace and dignity grow upon one the more they are studied. Mediaeval builders had a meaning even in putting such windows in pairs; it may seem to us a little fantastic, but as they made everything symbolical, so in this grouping they symbolized our Lord's sending out His Apostles two and two. Apart from such a consideration, there is a quiet grace in this long succession of lancet pairs which may safely be left to speak for itself.

The development of window forms is itself very interesting, and should be understood before an attempt is made to treat any church windows in particular. Mrs. Van Rensselaer, who has done so much to make the English cathedrals known in this country, thus traces the successive steps from style to style: "Fancy first a plain tall window with a round-arched head; then the round exchanged for a pointed head; then two, or three, or five perhaps, of these pointed windows set close together; and then a projecting moulding in the shape of an arch drawn around them, including them all and thus including, of necessity, a plain piece of wall above their heads. Then fancy this piece of wall pierced with a few small openings, and we have a group of connected lights in which, as a plant in its embryo, lies the promise of all after-development....

"The small lights in the upper field enlarge and multiply until they form a connected pattern which fills its whole area, and the jambs of the main lights diminish into narrow strips or very slender columns. The great arch, which in the first place did but encircle the windows, thus becomes itself the window--the 'plate-traceried' window which was richly developed in early French Gothic, but less richly in English, owing to the persistent local love for mere groups of lancets. Then all the stone-work shrinks still farther--the columnar character of the uprights is lost, and the flat surfaces between the upper openings change into mouldings of complex section. Thus the original tall lights and upper piercings surrender their last claim to independence; the uprights are no longer jambs or bits of wall but mullions, the arch-head is filled with genuine traceries, and all the elements of the design are vitally fused together within the sweep of the great window to form its multiple yet organic beauty."

The art of making stained glass windows went hand in hand with this development of architectural forms through the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and succeeding centuries. It has indeed been called the "principal branch of Mediaeval Art;" but was always treated as absolutely subservient to the particular architecture itself. A most eminent authority denies that the art of glass-staining has ever been lost. Glass itself was used by Christians in their churches from the earliest church-building times; the distinct art of painting on glass emerges, one might say, with the springing up of pointed architecture, though the beginnings show themselves in Norman architecture in the eleventh century. Four centuries the two arts flourished side by side; with the decadence of the greater came also the decline of the subsidiary; a poorer taste in building was naturally accompanied by a poorer taste in glass. With the revival of interest in those long-neglected periods of noble achievement, the Oxford movement of Church Restoration giving men the religious guiding principles for an intelligent appreciation of the forms of Mediaeval art, church building and glass staining were brought back again, the one with the other. And whether such restoration can leave us satisfied with the mere recovery of the riches of by-gone ages, or must mean also, as I believe, the development of what the present can contribute in a reverent but not slavish spirit--certain it is that the first step is to understand the past, to find out what was done in the great formative and classic periods, why it was done as it was and not otherwise, in a word, to master the models before we proceed on our own course; and, as I said before, to remember to which period and style our own edifice belongs.

It was my good fortune when recently in the city of Philadelphia, to obtain access to a rare work over which I spent some very delightful hours. Its author was a William Warrington, himself a designer and producer of windows, and a reverent student of ancient examples, who published his great folio in London, in 1848. From him I learned many things about the beginnings and progress of the art. Great were the difficulties of the eleventh century pioneers. They had to contend with defective methods of manufacture; not understanding glass-blowing they fused their glass in pots and crucibles, and cast it to about the required shape, in pieces not more than four or five inches in diameter. Cutting with the diamond was not known till the sixteenth century. They designed and made and erected their own work. When great orders were to be executed, artists were brought together from the different countries, and by a sort of "free-masonry" they worked together in perfect agreement as to styles, rules, and principles.

In the course of time, different countries produced slightly differing schools.

As in heraldry, the colors of the glass were intended for colors of precious stones; the representations of figures and objects were not meant to be pictures, but being also strictly symbolical, the drawing was conventional, with no intention to reproduce nature in color, or form, or position and perspective. The figures which excite ridicule on the part of one who is without the clue, justify themselves by this principle; nor is it quite true to say the men of that time did not know how to draw--their ability in this respect was not that of artists to-day, but if their object had been to produce a figure or a scene for the sole purpose of a picture, they might certainly and would certainly have given us something very different from what they did. While the small separate pieces are often very minutely pencilled, all such work being afterward burned in--there is no "shadowing," as in a picture, supposing the light to fall from a certain direction; but a kind of "relief" shading, making the view suitable to any aspect. In a word, the drawing is the same as in MSS., tapestries and heraldic designs. Ruby and sapphire were the ground colors. And in all the work the primitive colors were adhered to.

In York Minister there is to be found the largest and finest specimen of thirteenth century glass in England in a group of lancets known as the "Five Sisters." The lancets are each six feet wide and fifty feet high, and each divided into thirteen compartments or squares of different patterns. Their designs being largely of an ornamental character, they escaped destruction by the Puritans.

It is a curious fact that English stained glass at no time had large figures. In the thirteenth century Continental art in this respect diverged from ancient and English, under Italian influence.

In the Cathedral of Bourges there are one hundred and eighty-three stained glass windows, executed from the thirteenth century downwards. The early lancets have figures occupying the larger part of the window, sometimes fifteen or twenty feet high; over each figure a sort of canopy or tabernacle disproportionately small, and under it a kind of pedestal or base about a foot high. Around the margin is the finest work in the windows, in a broad band of mosaic.

Cologne Cathedral has four lancets each eleven times its width in height, filled with early glass of this period; the figures in the windows are in height one-third the height of the lancet, with a canopy above them.

The developments of the centuries following are of less interest to our present purpose. Suffice it to say that even in the rich Decorated Style of Architecture the treatment of individual windows was not what we might term ambitious: the effect was secured by not attempting too much in a single window, but by producing a rich harmony with subordination of each to the whole. In the Perpendicular Style which followed, in the fifteenth century, while there was a very abundant production of glass, its quality was inferior, and much white glass was used. Figures with canopies were used when the single openings were one foot wide and upward; panels, when they were considerably larger; and to fill the extreme length, story upon story. And there begins to appear a tendency to conform the glass less to the architecture itself.

From the sixteenth century on there is marked decay. The attempts to treat glass like canvas prove an entire failure. A voluptuous and sensual school of painting came in, debasing a religious art, which thus became secularized, and almost disappeared. The destruction of fine ancient examples in the Puritan revolution left England very poor, and the little that remained came to be less and less appreciated.

Curiously enough, large importations of glass consequent on the French Revolution with its destruction of churches, put into the hands of English churchmen what the religious revival of the Church soon taught them to appreciate once more, and so it is that to-day England is enriching her cathedrals and churches with restorations and new windows; and from her the impulse has naturally come to our own land also. But the production of stained glass is in America of very recent date.

From facts like the foregoing we may conclude that the subject is one of importance and involving so much that it is well that we should proceed cautiously in the placing of stained glass in Grace Church.

But shall we encourage such a movement at all?

It seems to me that this is the moment supremely opportune for us to inaugurate a scheme of window treatment such as shall glorify our house of God more and more till it reaches completion. How long it may take to reach completion is in a sense immaterial. That we should begin now, and make every step a right one, is the great matter.

The practical question is, Shall we choose to admit one or a few striking windows into this edifice, windows which may have no relation to each other, produced possibly by methods or on principles entirely at variance, in color-schemes discordant, in scale of drawing entirely dissimilar and unequal: or shall we guide intending donors to such gifts as shall be a satisfaction and a delight forever, beautiful each in itself, but more beautiful still when assembled? This I take it is the question. For I believe windows will be placed, whether we encourage it or not, within a decade, possibly much sooner. And when I put the question thus, it appears to me there is but one answer possible.

Let us then get down to the practical details in the matter. Leaving the great chancel window entirely out of consideration, we have five pairs of lancets of equal size on either side of the nave, and a sixth, smaller pair over the doors in continuation of the series up to the chancel. We have further, the magnificent group of three lancets at the foot of the nave, with a fourth lancet a little smaller, and still much larger than those in the pairs already referred to.

Here is a considerable number of windows--twenty-nine when we count in the chancel window; what an opportunity for discord and artistic anarchy! Let us say, rather, what a remarkable and rare opportunity for the production of a rich and hallowed splendor, fitted not only to express the consecration of man's gifts to God, but to instruct the minds and quicken the devotions of generations to come.

The objection which most readily offers itself when stained glass is proposed for Grace Church is that the twenty lancets at the sides are so extremely narrow and so very high that nothing can be done with them. If by 'doing something' is meant putting in scenes with several or many figures, it is most true. The breadth of wall between the two windows constituting the pair is so large that the scene could not be carried from the one to the other. But surely that does not exhaust the possibilities. The openings are wide enough to permit the treatment of single figures in full life-size if desired; figures with canopies, borders, and panels at the base, as in the best periods of ancient glass. The breadth of these openings is twenty-one inches; six inches more than that of the small pair erected All Saints, 1895, at the side of the pulpit, in which the figures are certainly of dignified stature, and by no means poor in back ground and accessories. If such results are possible in a space fifteen inches wide and six feet high; how much more in a space twenty-one inches wide and thirteen feet high.

Single figures, therefore, are demanded by the conditions which govern us, for the side lancets; unless we rest content with geometrical, or flower windows, or windows bearing emblems, more or less ornately bordered. I venture to say that at this stage of our history, when we are not pressed to fill our window-openings with whatever may be obtainable, we desire the best that can be had. This best, for the side lancets is,--single figures, with canopy, border and base panel.

Mr. F. S. Lamb of New York, who designed the beautiful work erected a year ago, has prepared and sent me two pairs of colored sketches, suggesting a noble and beautiful form which in the execution would, of course, far surpass what appears in the drawings. They are submitted for your careful study, and may be seen at any time in my library.

What then shall the figures be? Shall they be chosen at random? Artistically speaking, this might not be so disastrous, provided the same artist drew all the designs and controlled the execution, so that the scale of drawing and the scheme of color were kept in accord. And that is a great deal more than can be said of some of the principal churches in our greatest cities, where immense sums have been spent on these works. No; there is something better still, open to us. It is a serial treatment, with unity, and progress: so that the whole, when complete, shall tell one great story, each part a chapter therein; the whole impress one truth, each part contributing somewhat to the cumulative force of the great lesson.

And, not to detain you with all the processes of thought and long reflection by which at last we reach our conclusion--the figures we suggest are those which are conspicuous and representative in the Old and New Testaments. Our Divine Lord Himself should be, as He is, exalted in the great window over the altar. Beginning from the angle of the chancel arch to pass around the church, we come first to the pair of small windows next to the organ, from which now the light is excluded by the parish building. They may be taken as in a sense going with the organ, and scarcely a part of the general scheme. Let them be treated, at some time, in mosaic, with SINGING ANGELS, thus corresponding to the Angels directly opposite in the corresponding small windows. Then we pass to the first pair of lancets of uniform size, MELCHIZEDEK and ABRAHAM: the latter the great father of the faithful, the head of the covenant people; the former even superior to him, a priest forever, without beginning or end of days, type of our Lord's own Highpriesthood. Melchizedek appears before Abraham, bearing bread and wine, foreshadowing of the Holy Eucharist. What more suitable, as we look up to the altar and see above it the figure of Our Blessed Lord, than to turn to the head of the nave, and find here, at the dawn of religious history, standing out as type of the Christ in whom the course of the ages shall culminate, this King of Salem at the very beginning?

Recently placed.

We pass on. The next pair will be MOSES and SAMUEL: both conspicuous as appointed of God to lead, to rule, to judge the people whom God had chosen; Founders of Israel as a nation. Surely these, if any, we must commemorate as among the greatest in the covenant history.

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