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

Abstract

The poor reputation of nineteenth-century stained glass during much of the twentieth century has hindered our appreciation of its extraordinary variety and various strands of development. Critics of the commercialism of Victorian stained glass studios, and their imitation of medieval visual styles, have often set the stained glass of William Morris and his circle apart from the many thousands of other windows of the period in general surveys of the medium and in the popular imagination. Since the late 1970s there has been a slow growth of new studies reassessing the importance of a wider range of nineteenth-century stained glass, but much remains unexplored and the survival of more and more of these windows is increasingly at risk. A better appreciation of nineteenth-century stained glass reveals that Georgian traditions of glass painting were not entirely extinguished by the Gothic Revival, elements of which were adopted in hybrid works that are not clearly one or the other. Studios working with different designers were able to produce work in contrasting styles, and their adaptability and originality in accommodating the tastes of architects and patrons is instructive for our understanding of the business and aesthetics of church decoration in the nineteenth century.