St
Michael and All Angels is a minor gem of a Church which was consecrated in
1872, built in the style of Early English Gothic, and populated throughout with
Pre-Raphaelite stained glass as well as mosaics from James Powell and Sons (the
Whitefriars Studio). St Michael and All Angels, therefore, stands in a
tradition which reflects a set of very English styles and influences.
Henry Woodyer, its architect, was a disciple of Augustus Pugin. Giles Worsley has
written that Woodyer’s work is “predominantly muscular Gothic, in the spirit of
A W N Pugin” and like Pugin “stems from his religious bent.” At its best, he
argues, “there is an energetic vigour to his religious and secular work” and “a
convincing vision of the Middle Ages, rich with colour and decoration.”
Augustus
Welby Pugin - the architect, designer, writer, and theorist known as ‘God’s own
architect’ - had a major influence on architecture and design throughout the
English-speaking world well into the twentieth century. His importance lies
both in his creation of the Neo-Gothic style and in his anticipation of many of
the statements on design by John Ruskin which led to the formation of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the work of Morris & Co., and the development
of the Arts & Crafts Movement.
William Morris - poet, artist, philosopher, typographer
and political theorist - was the greatest designer and one of the most
outstanding figures of the Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1861, with a group of
friends, he started the business Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. which
provided beautiful, hand-crafted products and furnishings for the home.
Influenced by the ideas and writings of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, the company
revived many of the traditional arts which had been swept away by industrialisation
including embroideries, tapestries and stained-glass.
In addition to the creation of new artefacts, Morris was
also concerned about the preservation of art and architecture from earlier ages
and so, in 1877, he and other notable members of the Pre Raphaelite brotherhood
held the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) in Bloomsbury. As founding members they were deeply concerned
that well-meaning architects were scraping away the historic fabric of too many
buildings in their zealous ‘restorations.’ When the DAC rejected Clarke’s design
for St Michael and All Angels, they were in essence seeking to follow this
strand of Morris’ thought; although whether he would have agreed with their
decision is a moot point.
Many of the windows at St Michael and All Angels are by
Morris & Co. and feature leading Pre-Raphaelites including Ford Madox Brown,
Edward Burne-Jones, Morris, and, possibly, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Later
windows by Selwyn Image, Karl Parsons and Douglas Strachan are part of the same
tradition and ensure that the feel of the building as a whole is cohesive. The
third chancel window, which depicts the prophetess Miriam and was completed by
Morris from a design by Burne-Jones, was included on a list of the 12 best
stained glass windows in English churches as judged by photographer Lucinda Lambton.
The Whitefriars Company was a successful British glasshouse
closely associated with leading architects and designers from the later portion
of the 19th century onwards including Philip Webb who designed glass for
William Morris. From 1876 James Crofts Powell ran the stained glass department
which also developed mosaic techniques to the Byzantine standards of Ravenna.
Powell’s opus sectile mosaics were tilted to deflect the light and gained
sufficient credit to be used by William Blake Richmond in his work at St Paul’sCathedral. Whitefriars carried out the creation of the chancel mosaics at St
Michael and All Angels to designs by J. P. Hutchinson.
Despite
the beauty of the artwork and the building, it is not primarily the
Pre-Raphaelite work that I have come to see here. The most recent of the
windows, the 1929 St Cecilia and Angel
by Karl Parsons, is described in the Church guide as being “especially
beautiful when the summer evening sun shines through its vibrant colours.” Acid-etching
and plating was used to create the enriched colour and texture found in this
window. The window depicts St Cecilia, the Patron Saint of Music, and the music
she has inspired on this occasion, which is included in the upper tracery
section above the figures, is the fugue from Beethoven’s penultimate piano
sonata.
Karl
Parsons was pupil and assistant to Christopher Whall, who was an important
member of the Arts and Crafts Movement, a leading designer of stained glass and
a teacher at the Royal College of Art (RCA) and the Central School of Art and Design. In addition to his work in England, Whall also assisted in reviving the
art of stained glass in Ireland. At the invitation of Edward Martyn, Whall, and
his colleague Alfred Ernest Child, worked with Sarah Purser to set up a new
school of stained glass in Dublin which was christened An Tύr Gloine (Tower of
Glass), with a credo that “each window should be in all its artistic parts the
work of one individual artist.’
Parsons,
who also taught at the RCA and Central School was a craftsman of outstanding
ability who worked from a studio at the Glass House Fulham; the centre for most
stained glass designers during the first half of the twentieth century. He and
Harry Clarke met in 1913, while Clarke was studying the craft and before he
began work for his father’s glass workshop, the Clarke Studios, also based in
Dublin. The two men remained close friends until Clarke’s death in 1931. The St Cecilia and Angel window at St
Michael and All Angels, although “unmistakably by Parsons rather than Clarke”
was based on Clarke’s rejected design and means that a trace of the rejected
work is found in this church despite its perceived incongruity with the
existing Pre-Raphaelite glass (Harry Clarke: The Life & Work, Nicola Gordon Bowe).
Among
the many ironies of this story is the fact that Clarke has been described as “the
last of the Pre-Raphaelites” and “played a major part in the Arts and Crafts
movement in Ireland … as well as in the international stained glass revival
which arose from the movement in England.” He “can also be seen as Ireland’s
major Symbolist artist, whether in his illustrations or in his stained glass”
(Gordon Bowe).
Symbolism was also a wider international movement of which the Pre-Raphaelites
were part. Therefore, the rejected design, while considered out of keeping with
the Pre-Raphaelite windows already in the church, was actually part of a body
of work that built on the foundation laid by the Pre-Raphaelites.
Clarke’s
strange genius was to fuse “the Burne-Jones/Whall idiom” with “an eclectic and
decadent Symbolism of medieval richness and Byzantine splendour” which was
achieved by means of his having, as a young man, “absorbed Burne-Jones, [Aubrey] Beardsey, Charles Ricketts, Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, the Glasgow School, [Gustave] Klimt, the Japanese print, the Symbolists, and the Russian ballet.”
As a result, “his art displays a wilful decadence and an ambivalent religious
mysticism of medieval intensity which ranges from the sublimely beautiful to
the grotesquely macabre, rarely found in the work of his Celtic peers.” (Gordon
Bowe).
Similarly,
James White has noted that Clarke “always carried the sensual-mystical conflict
with him” - viewing “his drawings as an outlet from the religious subjects with
which he was daily involved in his stained glass work” – and that, as a result,
“few artists have been more concerned with the conflict of religion and
sensuality.” His works are “uniquely imaginative creations” undertaken with
remarkable technical skill meaning that “when he applied his minute and precise
line to his process of plating and aciding he achieved an art form of
extraordinary perfection.” Peyton Skipwith has suggested that by means of Clarke’s
work, alongside that of Evie Hone at An Tύr Gloine, it was Ireland which
revived the art of stained glass in the twentieth century (Gordon Bowe).
During
his short life Clarke created 160 stained glass windows for churches and
private patrons in Ireland, England, the United States and Australia. His unique
style and technique combined rich colours with elongated figures that exude
poise and grace. Deep blues and ruby reds were the hallmark of his work. As an
illustrator of books, his five books for Harrap and Co show his genius in the
area of graphic art. In England, work by Clarke is most easily seen at the
Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Stained Glass Museum in Ely.
The Blue Aeroplanes - Colour Me.
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