Stained Glass - Glorious illumination

Post-mediaeval stained glass is the most unfairly neglected of the pictorial arts in Britain. Few people give it a second glance, even fewer invest the time necessary to allow a window to reveal its meaning and its full beauty. Yet some examples in the medium made between the middle of the nineteenth century and the First World War are among the finest works of art of the time.

Present in nearly every church in the land, the very ubiquity of stained glass windows militates against attention, especially as the majority, as with any art form, scarcely merit close attention. The choice for this day is determined by artistic quality, by variety of type and authorship and, though this hardly seems a rational criterion, proximity to the District Line. Fortuitously, this does not compromise the other two criteria at all.

This is a glorious day of iridescent beauty, in five churches between Putney Bridge and Monument Stations. There is one fine sixteenth-century window and several from the later twentieth century but late Victorian and Edwardian work predominates. This period witnessed a peak of technical accomplishment and artistic – and chromatic – brilliance.

Stained glass was rarely in the vanguard of artistic development. Much of its allure lies in its post-Pre-Raphaelite sweetness and poignancy, Aesthetic Movement yearning and graceful naturalism, innocent of the visceral primitivism beginning to be introduced by leading Continental painters, though later the medium proved to be very well suited to abstraction.

The lecturer is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Vice-President and Honorary Fellow of the British Society of Master Glass-Painters. His book Arts & Crafts Stained Glass was written while he was a Research Fellow at the V&A Museum.