Note
by Shirley Bayley
We have a wonderful collection of stained glass
windows at St.Pauls. Stained glass windows have been placed
in churches for centuries, not only to enhance the building
but also as usually the cartoons (or scenes) illustrate Bible
stores and helped the many parishioners who could not read or
write, prior to mass education, understand the lessons and sermons
of the church services, as well as giving pleasure to all who
saw them.
The first of our windows was set in place in
1851 and is by Jean-Baptiste
Capronnier of Brussels. It is possible it was chosen by
Mrs Bates who gave it to the church, after seeing Capronniers
displayed at the Great
Exhibition in London that year. This became the first of
14 placed in the church over a number of years by this designer
(although two were removed during the remodelling of the church
in the 1990s). It is believed our windows are one of the most
extensive Capronnier collections in England.
The magnificent east window is by another prestigious
designer, William Wailes of Newcastle on Tyne and was a gift
from Mr James Buckley in 1857. The oriel part of the window
depicts St. Paul preaching from the Agora in Athens and the
main partions depict scenes from the life of Christ.
The memorial window placed in the South Transcept
in 1913 was given by Mrs Garside in memory of her husband and
renovated in the 1990s and lit from behind in memory of Mr Ken
Lee. The window is a copy of the painting by Wm Holman Hunt:
"The Light of the World" - the original is in Keble
College, Oxford.
As a memorial to Canon Sheriff who was Vicar
of St. Pauls for 36 years (1888-1923), a west window was erected
in 1925 and paid for by public subscription. It is a very different
style of window because of its heraldic design depicting the
Arms of the Province of York, Diocese of Chester and Cambridge
University (from which he graduated). Over the top of the window
is an S and a gold cross and on each side is carved in relief
in the stone work the monogram in Greek "Jesus and Christ".
Jean-Baptiste
Capronnier (1814-91)
Jean-Baptiste was the son of Francois
Capronnier who had settled in Brussels, around 1830, after spending
some time at the Sevres factory. Together with his son, Francois
set out to rediscover the technique of glass painting - a craft
for which Belgian artists had been well-known in the past, but
one which had fallen into neglect. Jean-Baptiste's early reputation
was built on this study of old methods of working and the clever
restoration of older examples of stained glass work, as well
as copies made for the Brussels archaeological museum.
Jean-Baptiste took over the workshop
in 1840 and under his direction it expanded with commissions
coming from all over Europe, including many in Britain. His
work went into private and public buildings as well as churches
and cathedrals establishing Capronnier as the greatest of the
nineteenth century Belgian stained glass designers and restorers.
At the Paris Exhibition of 1855 he won the only medal awarded
for glass painting.
Capronnier's work was popular in Britain
and a favourite of Charles Winston, the London lawyer who is
credited with the rediscovery of the methods of making coloured
glass in the middle of the nineteenth century. Capronnier exhibited
at the Great Exhibition of 1851 - where Mrs. Bates may have
seen examples of his work.
Martin Harrison in Victorian Stained
Glass (Barrie & Jenkins, 1980) describes Capronnier's windows
as "blatantly bright and technically brilliant" and
goes on to say: "is it too fanciful to suggest that windows
which were so clearly the result of long and painstaking labour
naturally found favour with the wealthy industrialist patronage?"
While
Jean-Baptiste carried out some of the designs himself, he also
employed a number of other artists, including Charles de Groux,
Constantin Meunier, Francois Joseph Navez.
Jean-Baptiste died in 1891 aged 77. His business was carried
on my his son, Jules-Adrien in association with Francois-Ambroise
Comere until 1910 when the Capronnier workshops were bought
by Camille and Arthur Wybo.
The Capronnier Archive can be found here.
Our thanks go to
the Stained Glass Museum for help in finding informataion
on Capronnier.
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