Art or Articles of Trade: Appreciating Variety in Nineteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Stained Glass

The vast quantity and variety of nineteenth-century stained glass presents serious challenges to those who would venture to make generalizations about it. The 1850s and 1860s saw a rapid expansion in demand, and the popularity of the Gothic Revival as an architectural style, particularly for churches, resulted in the establishment of a multitude of firms making stained glass in towns and cities across Britain. Their output ranged from patterned windows with geometric and foliate decoration to large pictorial works, and was produced by teams of skilled designers, cartoonists, painters, glaziers, and technicians. Tens of thousands of windows were produced for churches alone, but a tiny proportion has been studied in any detail. Much has not even been dated and attributed. While the names of some nineteenth-century stained glass designers are well known, notably William Morris (1834–1896) and his friend Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), as well as the architect A. W. N. Pugin (1812–1852), they are more commonly celebrated for their work in other artistic media. By contrast, the names of equally important designers of the medium — William Wailes (1808–1881), John Hardman Powell (1827–1895), John Richard Clayton (1827–1913), Charles Eamer Kempe (1837–1907), Henry Holiday (1839–1927), and Christopher Whall (1849–1924) — are familiar to enthusiasts of the medium and as names in the Pevsner architectural guides, but are unlikely to attract crowds of admirers to a retrospective exhibition. The neglect of stained glass and its designers and makers as a subject for study has its roots in nineteenth-century debates about the boundaries between art, craft, industry, and business.1 The status of stained glass as an art was questioned by those that perceived it as an industrial process, and the sheer quantity that was produced inevitably bowed to commercial constraints. ‘Trade rushed in where artists scorned to tread,’ lamented the artist

of Pre-Raphaelitism and Morris's status as a conveniently progressive activist and champion of the emergent Arts and Crafts Movement during the 1880s and 1890s. 8 The bias against much stained glass produced in the nineteenth century remained strong throughout most of the twentieth century. In 1941 the News and Notes section in the Journal of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters did not regret the disappearance of nineteenth-century stained glass as a result of devastating war damage. 9 Nikolaus Pevsner , an International Modernist, embedded a bias against much Victorian stained glass in his influential Buildings of England volumes, but troubled to mention windows by Morris's studio. 10 While Pevsner's friend Alec Clifton-Taylor, writing in 1974, conceded that some Victorian stained glass was 'innocuous' and a small amount 'excellent', he dismissed swathes of it as 'detestable', 'dull', 'feeble', and 'vexatious', advocating its wholesale removal. 11 A. Charles Sewter, author of a two-volume catalogue on Morris's stained glass, agreed that much nineteenth-century work was 'artistically negligible or deplorable, produced by artisans in commercial workshops simply as articles of trade', but also contended that 'the best Victorian windows, among which some of those produced by Morris's firm must take the pre-eminent place, were the finest stained glass made in at least three hundred years'. 12 Sewter acknowledged the achievements of Morris's predecessors in the revival of stained glass in the earlier part of the century, as did John Piper, who described the earlier nineteenth-century glass painters -David Evans (1793-1861), Francis Eginton (1737-1805), George Hedgeland (1825-1898), and Thomas Willement (1786-1871) -as 'pioneers and reformers', while lamenting that 'they or their immediate successors all became conformers'. 13 While he commended the earlier work of Clayton & Bell, he maintained that once they had become established, they lost their creative power, 'flourish[ing], on the whole, in inverse ratio to the beauty of their goods' (Sewter, i, 10). 8   , and Carl Almquist (1848-1924) among others. These books consciously rebrand the work considered as 'Pre-Raphaelite stained glass' and in most cases rigorously ignore the later work of most of the largest firms. 14 This reinforces a sharp divide between early (good, Pre-Raphaelite) and later (bad, trade) work by the large firms of Clayton & Bell, Lavers & Barraud, and Heaton, Butler & Bayne in the 1860s, so that the stained glass of the same firms only a few years later is rendered invisible, and not even worthy of comparison (Angels & Icons, pp. 114, 120, 160). Two other important stained glass firms, C. E. Kempe and Burlison & Grylls, are adjudged too academic and conservative to be included even for comparison, although their early work shares some of the characteristics of stained glass by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in the late 1860s and 1870s. 15 In the absence of better studies of a wider range of these prolific stained glass firms, and the difficulties in accessing attributed and dated illustrations of windows for study, it is impossible to properly appreciate and survey the design and production teams behind the vast industry, or the technical innovation and stylistic invention and variety that was integral to its success. Despite important work done by scholars and enthusiasts in the field since the 1970s, the caricature of Victorian stained glass as 'conventional', 'medievalist', 'sentimental', 'commercial', and 'repetitive', while simultaneously exempting Morris and his circle from these charges, has persisted. The remainder of this article seeks to briefly suggest ways in which the stylistic diversity of nineteenth-century stained glass can be better appreciated, and at the same time demonstrate that the separation and elevation of 'Pre-Raphaelite' stained glass, however defined, is unhelpful and unjustifiable. 14

Old masters and medievalism
The medievalism of the vast majority of ecclesiastical stained glass windows in the second half of the nineteenth century was the result of a relatively short transition away from a more pictorial tradition grounded in the Renaissance masters. By the eighteenth century, glass painting with enamels was sufficiently advanced to closely replicate the effect of oil painting, often on rectangular sheets of white glass, which were leaded together to make a large window. The artists associated with this style included Joshua Price (active 1715-17) and his son William (d.1765), Thomas Jervais (d.1799), who executed Joshua Reynolds's (1723-1792) designs for the west window of New College Oxford in 1775-85, and Eginton. 16 In the later eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, William Peckitt (1731-1795), Willement, and Evans introduced more coloured glass into their work, reducing the reliance on enamel paint for colour, and increasing the transparency -and colour -of their windows. The models for their works were often Continental Renaissance and baroque masters, which were increasingly at odds with the growing adoption of elements of medieval design during the 1820s and 1830s. Gothic Revival forms also reflected a growing interest in the politics, culture, and society of the Middle Ages, and a sense that Gothic forms were more appropriate for windows in medieval churches and cathedrals. 17 That mood intensified in the 1840s, principally as a result of the growing influence of the architectural ideas promoted by A. W. N. Pugin and in the pages of the Ecclesiologist from its inception in 1841. Pugin urged a return to the 'true principles' of medieval design for architecture and architectural furnishings, while the Ecclesiologist, which was the house journal of the Cambridge Camden Society, appointed itself the sole arbiter of architectural and theological taste against a backdrop of ecclesiastical reform and reaction, and shared many of Pugin's opinions about Gothic, or 'pointed', architecture. 18 The renewed interest in providing ornament 16  and imagery for new and restored churches resulted in the commissioning of figurative stained glass for churches, and patrons were encouraged to commemorate their loved ones with pictorial windows rather than the stone memorials adorned with cherubs that had accumulated around the walls of churches. 19 Ecclesiological opinion quickly coalesced around the idea of making stained glass using the styles and methods of the Middle Ages. The styles especially favoured were those of the later thirteenth and earlier fourteenth century: the Middle Pointed or Decorated style as classified by Thomas Rickman's An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture, first published in 1817. 20 There was a particular distaste for Rubens: Pugin described Rubens's Crucifixion as 'painful, not to say disgusting; certainly not edifying', while John Ruskin (1819-1900) found the seventeenth-century artist's gloomy colours 'irreligious, thoughtless, or obscene'. 21 The latter forthrightly condemned the 'barbarism' of emulating the art of oil painting on glass, which destroyed its transparency and spiritual character (ii, 392-94).
Nevertheless, the extent to which the characteristics of the Gothic Revival were taken up by artists and makers differed, and many continued to make work in varying styles. David Evans's copy of Rubens's Descent from the Cross at the Church of St Chad, Shrewsbury (1842), reproduces the three scenes of the altarpiece with all of its chiaroscuro effect at the same time as Evans and his contemporaries were encasing figures and scenes in colourful Gothic architectural canopy work elsewhere (Fig. 1). 22  colours beneath heavy architectural canopies in white glass with silver stain (Fig. 2).
Although medieval styles and methods were soon to predominate among church memorial windows, the variety of stained glass on display at the Great Exhibition of 1851 serves to underline that this was not a complete or consistent development for the medium as a whole. The stained glass exhibited was intended to attract the attention of a variety of domestic and civic patrons as well as ecclesiastical ones, and demonstrated a wide range of approaches to glass painting. While much of the stained glass, such as that designed by Pugin for the Medieval Court, demonstrated medieval   (1812-1869). 23 The Ecclesiologist criticized work at the Great Exhibition that was at variance to its leanings. Of the work of Hoadley and others, it commented only that 'we fear we could not say much to their advantage'. 24 The work of French artists who sought to revive Romanesque and early Gothic stained glass was admired, such as A. Gérente (1821-1868) and Antoine Lusson père (d.1854), who received an honourable mention (Allen, p. 90). The only prize awarded to a British exhibitor for stained glass was to John Hardman & Co. of Birmingham, whose work (for the Medieval Court) had been designed by Pugin, who was also, controversially, a juror (Allen, pp. 142-43). Narrow interpretations of the correct medieval styles for stained glass did not go unchallenged. The artist Edward Baillie (1812-1856) complained about the prize awarded to John Hardman (given his partnership with Pugin) in a contribution to the Builder, and quoted the leading stained glass historian Charles Winston (1814-1864) at length on the importance of affording glass painters the freedom to work in a contemporary style, rather than one that was 'degraded into caricatures', according to antiquarian tastes. 25 Although Winston admired the ability of artists to convincingly imitate medieval styles, he proposed the development of a tradition of glass painting that was 'free from the restraints of antiquarianism'. 26 Winston argued that modern stained glass should be designed by the best contemporary artists and not 'mere artisans who at present make it their trade and confine it to the lowest depths of degradation'. 27

Shades of the Gothic Revival
The competing ideals for modern stained glass, as advocated by critics such as Charles Winston at one extreme and by Pugin and the ecclesiologists at another, left plenty of room for variety in the middle. There were other 23 (1796-1869), in addition to their work that can be classified as 'pictorial' or Gothic. The characteristics of Gothic Revival stained glass can be appreciated through the comparison of a typical window by the firm of William Wailes, illustrated here by the east window at the Church of the Holy Trinity at Trefnant in North Wales (Fig. 3), with a window that might be understood as its antithesis: one of those in the south wall of Peterhouse College Chapel, Cambridge, made in 1855 by Max Ainmiller (1807-1870) of the Royal Bavarian Stained Glass Manufactory in Munich (Fig. 4). Charles Winston considered the Bavarians' work superior to any contemporary British makers in the mid-1850s, and controversially recommended their work for the glazing of Glasgow Cathedral, a project that he supervised. 28 Both windows are arranged across three lights, and while the Peterhouse window illustrates a single biblical scene, broken by the two intervening window mullions, the Trefnant window places six subjects within the bounds of the individual window lights, with a further image of Christ in Glory in the large tracery light above. The rendering of these scenes is in a simplified and largely two-dimensional style, and although Wailes's figures have a degree of modelling, there is no attempt to recreate the pictorial realism found in the work of the Munich firm, rendered in a style that closely echoed contemporary oil painting. Each of the scenes in Wailes's window refers to medieval iconography, notably that portraying the Ascension, which shows the patch of grass on which Christ stood in the midst of the disciples, who look up to where he has gone. In the depiction of the Resurrection, Christ hovers above an empty medieval chest tomb, with sleeping soldiers below: Roman soldiers dressed in medieval armour. The scenes are contained within much decorative glass -both foliate and architectural -imitative of medieval work, and the palette is limited to a narrow range of red, blue, yellow, and green glass with some paler variations. By contrast, the framing of the scene at Peterhouse is limited to a slender white glass border at the sides and over the main lights, with a vine motif below, which, unlike the rest of the window, has late-medieval parallels. The small tracery lights are filled with patterned and coloured glass that does not relate to the rest of the window in the way that the tracery is integrated into the overall design of the window at Trefnant, which is infused with pattern, in the borders and even in the sky behind his scenes. Ainmiller's window uses large expanses of coloured and white glass, demonstrating virtuoso  glass painting technique to render stone, flesh, and drapery, in contrast to the small pieces of white and coloured glass leaded together in Wailes's window. Although Ruskin disapprovingly associated the 'pictorial' style with German glass painters, it had flourished in England in the work of Eginton and in some windows by Evans, whose work continued to exhibit variety. In addition to windows of figures standing within Gothic architectural canopies, windows by Evans were also executed in a manner closer to Ainmiller than Wailes until his death in 1861. Among his later works, his east window for the Church of St Julian in Shrewsbury (Fig. 5), based on paintings by Raphael and Michelangelo, was adjudged as his masterpiece by Charles Sewter, and can be read as a defiant riposte to his critics among the ecclesiologists (Sewter, i, 11-12). Others, such as Hedgeland, resisted conformity to the colouring and figure drawing of earlier medieval styles, and was encouraged by Winston. 29 The work in the 1850s and 1860s of other 29 Sewter, i, 12; Harrison, pp. 36-37. William Wailes's window at Trefnant provides the vocabulary of a Gothic Revival window: the confinement of figures and scenes within the window lights, the use of medieval iconography, Gothic architectural framing, the predominance of pattern, as well as the avoidance of large sheets of glass painted with layers of enamel in favour of smaller pieces of white and coloured glass leaded together in the mosaic method. Elements of these conventions, such as the Gothic frames around Ballantine's scene at Tremeirchion (Fig. 6), could be adopted in windows without others, and Their assured and inventive approach to medieval convention successfully harmonized thirteenthand fourteenth-century Gothic approaches to design with more innovative, expressive draughtsmanship. 30 The work of these and other firms charted a course away from both the imitation of oil painting on glass and the constraints of medieval precedent towards a more vibrant use of the medium, utilizing simplified line and tone.
Most firms and partnerships making stained glass adapted their approaches to suit different patrons and architectural contexts. James Powell & Sons were notable for the variety of styles found in their windows, which is attributable to the range of artists who provided designs that were made at the firm. These included Augustus Bouvier (1827-1881), Henry Casolani (1817-1885), Burne-Jones, Edward Poynter (1836-1919), Holiday, and Wooldridge. Henry Holiday also designed windows for Heaton, Butler & Bayne, who in turn collaborated with other artists, such as Frederic Shields . Although our present lack of knowledge about the designers of most of Heaton, Butler & Bayne's windows impairs our ability to fully understand the variety of stained glass the firm made, two near-contemporary east windows underline the potential stylistic differences within a single studio. The east window made for the new church at Halkyn in Flintshire is in a rather conventional fifteenth-century English style, with dark muted colours framed by white glass architectural borders; while their window for another new church, at Llanychaearn in Ceredigion, is a more innovative design in bright and varied colours (Figs. 7, 8). The window, portraying the Ascension, uses an upper circular design to hold the three-light window together, with the ascending head of Christ at its centre, while the disciples are neatly contained in groups at the base of the outer lights, with Mary alone at the centre.
The differences between these two windows, and between them and those typical of Heaton, Butler & Bayne in the 1860s, exemplify the potential variability across the output of dozens of stained glass firms. The nave windows at Halkyn, also by the firm, are even more unusual, with pictorial scenes executed entirely in monochrome with no coloured glass. If such variety confounds some of the stereotypes associated with Victorian stained glass, it has also, paradoxically, contributed to its neglect. In 1980 Harrison cautioned that a thoroughgoing reassessment of Victorian stained glass would not be possible before the firm establishment of 'the authorship of a very high percentage of extant windows', and this remains a distant aspiration (p. 10). For example, the wide variation of design and painterly style in the stained glass of Lavers & Barraud has made it difficult to attribute designers prior to the emergence of a more easily recognizable style in the 1880s, after Nathaniel Westlake (1833-1921) had become its main designer and sole proprietor (trading as Lavers, Barraud & Westlake). 31 The ecclesiastical furnishers, Cox and Son, claimed that their windows were provided by 'eminent church designers' in their 1870 catalogue, but in the absence of published work on the attribution of their windows, the work   of these designers in the field of stained glass remains largely unknown. 32 Stained glass windows that do not conform to the usual house styles of the better known major firms are the most difficult to attribute stylistically, in the absence of archives or signatures conferring their authorship. This has had the consequence of marginalizing unattributed windows, which could potentially broaden our understanding of the medium, but they have yet to find a place in narratives about artists, designers, and studios.

Artists, architects, and stained glass
Holiday's characterization of the stained glass artists of the Gothic Revival as mere tradesmen, who 'defiled nearly all of our cathedrals with their stained glass', may have deterred those looking for art in Victorian stained glass (p. 2). The idea of the subordinate role of the glazier was widely held in the mid-nineteenth century, and portrayed artists making stained glass as simply following designs made by others, providing colour and decoration in accordance with the overall vision of the architect. 33 Writing in the Ecclesiologist in 1852, the young architect G. E. Street (1824-1881) questioned whether stained glass could ever be an appropriate medium for serious pictorial imagery, describing it as 'a vehicle for architectural decoration, and not primarily for the introduction of religious pictures into churches'. 34 Similarly, Ruskin claimed that it was 'impossible to draw in colour properly on glass' and that painted windows 'should be a simple, transparent harmony of lovely bits of coloured glass -easily mended again if smashed, and pretending to no art but that of lovely colour arrangement, and clear outline grouping'. 35