Studio: international art (61.1914)

Henry A.

Payne s Stained-Glass

Windows

is splendid. Another window
in the same church brings
out a characteristic oi
Mr. Payne's figure-drawing.
He departs from the tradition
that the disciples and prophets
must necessarily be old
men with bald heads and
flowing beards. The conven-
tional face of Christ, king,
prophet, or angel, never satisfies
him ; he aims at character. His
saints look saintly and not
feeble-minded ; his angels may
smile, but never smirk.

A particularly characteristic
window is that in the little
church on Hook Common. In
the centre light is a figure of
the labourer carrying scythe and
sickle, approaching a wood with
vivid green trees, while under
his feet is grass exquisitely
bright, sown with wild roses,
daffodils, and daisies. In the
adjoining panel in the fore-
ground is a group of lambs
cropping the sunlit herbage, in-
tersected by a stream across
which brier roses stretch. In
the middle distance are white
horses yoked to a plough furrow-
ing the brown earth on the side
of a hill crowned by a clump
of very dark brown trees, be-
hind which the sun is setting.
Here—and it is the same in
nearly all his windows — Mr.
Payne's rendering of grass and
clover is enchanting not only
from the colour, but from the
variety of flowers all springing
naturally out of it. An idea of
this is conveyed in the coloured
plate, Sir Galahad, which in
other respects illustrates well
the effect he obtains. Birds
too—eagles, as in the Hook
Church, peacocks, as in Madres-
field, and pigeons, as in the
Scisset and other windows—are
rarely absent.

In the large west window of
Mr. Bidlake's fine modern
130

MEMORIAL WINDOW IN SCISSET
CHURCH, YORKSHIRE. BY HENRY
A. PAYNE, A.R.W.S.

Gothic church of St. Agatha,
Birmingham, the subject pic-
tured is the Rising from the
Tomb. Here the treatment of
the dawn breaking behind the
figure of Christ is very bold.
The subject is almost beyond
the reach of glass, but it is
nevertheless daring in its con-
ception. The intense blue
colour in the tracery lights
shimmering with glittering things
of rose and gold and silver is
strongly reminiscent of the glass
in Chartres Cathedral. Another
window of similar character is
that in Madresfield Church.
Here children are portrayed
naturally as they are in the
village to-day in a profusion of
flowers, and there is a marvel-
lous representation of the
passing of the redeemed through
death to life. There is, how-
ever, no hint of a doom—an
opportunity a mediaeval artist
would not have let slip to use
every shade of red, purple, and
violet.

Windows such as these, and
others in the churches named
at the outset, show that a style
has been developed which,
after the lapse of nearly four
centuries, makes the art of
glass-painting a great one again.
The meaningless imitation of
the old styles which accom-
panied the Gothic revival some
seventy years ago had not a
touch of life or spirit. It re-
ceived a check in the sixties
from the genius of Burne-Jones
and Morris. From their inspira-
tion dates practically all that is
worth seeing in modern glass-
painting. In the hands of Mr.
Payne and the small group of
artists with similar ideals the
art is now a living one and
must continue to be so if only
the power of appreciation can
be excited.

T. M. Legge.