St. Brendan's Cathedral, Loughrea

1897-1947

A Machine Readable Version

Thomas MacGreevy

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[p.353]
By Thomas Mac Greevy

Though the term has a certain dictionary value, it should be taken as axiomatic that in actual practice there is no such thing as a "literary formula." For literature is a live thing and formula a dead thing, so obviously what is literary cannot be formula and what is formula cannot be literary. With every new subject a writer undertakes he has to begin at the beginning all over again. He must wait on his theme and let it determine the form the phrases, the individual words even of his writing. Experience, of course brings a certain degree of faith in the working of the process. The writer, whether his medium be poetry or prose, learns to believe that, according to the congeniality of the subject and the amount of time he can give to the elucidation of his impressions of it, a more or less coherent and appropriate statement will suggest itself. And though he is, as a writer, lost if he lets himself become too cocksure, he may, at the same time, count on past experience to carry him through to reasonable success in interpreting or discussing a hitherto unknown phrase of a subject with which he is familiar.

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But now and then he will find himself in the presence of something mysterious that has been added by nature or by man to an object or a subject which, in kind at least, is familiar enough. And if the mysteriousness be a lovely mysteriousness he will find, when it comes to the expressing of it in words, that his faith in his own capacity has vanished. Then, more than ever, he must wait on his subject. Then, more than ever, does he find that he has to begin—if he can begin at all—at the very beginning. And the more experienced he is, the more aware he is of the inadequacy of words. And dictionaries will not help. The dictionary says that a mountain, for instance, is a natural elevation of the earth's surface. But what good is that to a man who is seeking for words to convey the impression which, say, Mount Errigal has made upon him?

It is not often that modern Irish works of art give a critic or a writer on art—they do not, unfortunately, always mean the same thing—the sense of being at a loss for words. Abroad I have had that sense. Many times during the last twenty-five years I have visited Chartres Cathedral, but I do not yet know why it is that every line, every colour, every passage of wall surface inside that vast edifice seems to lead the eye to the tabernacle of the high altar—an altar, as it happens, which in its pseudo-classicism is utterly out of keeping with everything else in the most beautiful of all Christian churches. Again, I remember Degas writing from Madrid to his friends in Paris after he had been to see the pictures by Velazquez at the Prado, "There are no words. No there are no words," and leaving it at that, adding nothing in extenuation of his sense of verbal inadequacy.

I have no intention of suggesting that the interior of St. Brendan's, Loughrea, the cathedral church of the diocese of Clonfert, is artistically as sublime at the interior of Chartres or as the Madrid Velazquezs. Velazquez, after all, has claims to being the greatest painter in history. He painted all mankind, a whole society, from king to beggar with a sense of something approximating to absolute truth that was born of the detachment he had learned from the great mystical writers of the generation before his own; and with, at the same time, an unsentimental charity based on the understanding of human imperfection which the same mystics, Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross in particular, had shown in their lives. As for Chartres, apart even from the wonderful interior, one has merely to stand outside the nave on the north side and see the whole great pile soaring upwards, at once in overwhelming strength and unfailing grace, to recognise for oneself the justice of the world's belief that never before or since did men give stone the capacity to exalt the mind to the idea of divinity as they did in thirteenth century France.

There is no such architectural sublimity at Loughrea. The cathedral is only a little church. It is not even as large as the architect intended it to be. The choir never became a choir. The then bishop, Dr. Healy, changed his mind about it and it stopped short almost as soon as it began, to turn into a relatively shallow sanctuary. The architect—his name was William Byrne—meant it to be the depth of two bays longer than it is. And outside, especially, the change of plan results in a certain suggestion of stuntedness which is not helped by the absence of decoration at the apse end. Otherwise the exterior aspect of the cathedral, in its spacious setting, against a beautiful natural background of lake and hill, is rather pleasing. The main north, facade has even a certain grandeur. In its breadth and height and in the size, [p.355] shape and placing of doors and windows it is well proportioned. The tower has mass yet rises with an easy upward thrust. And the spire that crowns the tower is not ungraceful. As for the side elevation, the eye is pleased by the height of the nave, the aisles are in good enough proportion to it, the transepts are solidly structural and organically relate to the architectural design of the whole. Yet one is at best pleased rather than stirred. The building, one feels is the work of an accomplished craftsman rather than of a passionately inventive creative artist. As it stands, Loughrea Cathedral is a tasteful piece of modern Gothic but hardly more than that. Certainly the exterior does not prepare one for the effect produced by the interior.

Then one goes inside and—well, I can only affirm that when, recently, I visited Loughrea Cathedral—with the hope that I should be able to write something about it—my first pleasure in the quietly beautiful appropriateness of the decoration to its religious purpose was soon followed by a feeling of dismay at the thought of having to find words to convey the effect of it. Normally when one enters a church one begins by saying a prayer. And then one proceeds to take notice. But at Loughrea you find after a little time that though you do proceed automatically, in accordance with your intention to take notice, you have remained, somehow, in the collected mood of prayer. The interior of the church is itself a presence, unified, in harmony with itself, collected, as though before the greater Presence in the tabernacle, and communicating its collectedness to you, taking you into itself. And though you know, from occasional past experience, that the effect on you is to produced by art, you have no impulse to become analytical there and then, to distinguish between the different works of art, to consider the stained glass apart from the sculpture or the ironwork from the woodwork. You are content to have been drawn into the mood of the holy place, to submit to it for the time being, and to put off to a later visit the objective examination of windows and stations, statues and reliefs, altars and railings, pews and confessionals, sanctuary lamps and candelabra. In any case they will ultimately defeat you. For, no matter how much you examine them and analyse them, you are not going to find words for the intangible harmony there is between them, the mysterious accord that makes them a unified act of adoration, a sustained, single act of adoration though achieved by a multiplicity of artists, above all, an act of adoration that has included you in itself, reducing you to the scarcely perceptible beat of the heart which, as you are a worshipper, means your nothingness and your glory.

In the course of that first visit somebody drew my attention to the beauty of the sanctuary lamp. But I was standing at the altar-rail almost immediately underneath, so got no more than an idea of something that was vaguely distinguished and grand. And I recognised Michael Healy's Last Judgment window from a reproduction of it I had studied in Dublin. For the rest I went away all but unaware of the details of any part of the interior decoration or fittings of the cathedral. I was only conscious of the beautifully devotional atmosphere of the whole church and more particularly of the sanctuary. Of that I was very conscious as I have tried to suggest. But when I had to think about it, I felt sure there were no words to describe it adequately. I merely realised my debt to the Irish artists who had consecrated their gifts to creating that atmosphere; and realised also that that atmosphere, which their work in the aggregate produces and which is not [p.356] adequately to be expressed in words, is more important than any, even the greatest, of their individual works.

Fifty years ago, in March, 1897, the foundation stone of St. Brendan's was laid. It would be impossible to identify all the elements and all the influences, religious, artistic, political and personal, that have gone towards making it what it is now, which is to say, in its interior decoration the most comprehensively beautiful expression in terms of art of the religion of the people of modern Ireland. But the date of its foundation is significant. In 1897 the Irish revival was just beginning to gather momentum. The spirit of that revival was extending to every sphere of the nation's activities, to the sphere of the fine arts as to all others. For the extension of the spirit of such a revival to the fine arts, perhaps the most essential thing at any time is a cultivated lay opinion. A society always includes artists capable of rising to the highest demands it can make on them. But it is not always possible to find persons of sufficient knowledge and judgment to ensure that the artists are inspired and set at liberty to rise to those heights. In Ireland at the turn of the century there were, fortunately, a few such persons. And outstanding amongst them was Edward Martyn, a man who had had a full education in the first instance a conventional Anglo-Irish gentleman's education and after that a capacity to give himself the education of a European Catholic humanist. He had a natural interest in the philosophic significance of the fine arts. And then, happily for his country, he discovered in himself, as he grew older, a sympathy, that was as disinterested as it was unsentimental (and that was, of course, most uncommon in the landlord class to which he belonged), with the political and even the social aspirations of the resurgent people. Once a man of his attainments took up such a position he could obviously be a most valuable influence in the cultural life of the country as a whole. Martyn is most famous as the co-founder with Archbishop Walsh of the Palestrina Choir at the pro cathedral in Dublin. But his influence on the early destinies of Loughrea cathedral is possibly even more important.

It all began when the occasion arose for him to have stained glass windows erected in memory of members of his own family in the parish church at Ardrahan. He then discovered that the production of what passed for stained glass was almost entirely in the hands of German and English commercial firms whose windows, whether considered as art or as craft, were chiefly remarkable for their mediocrity. From there he went on to the discovery that in the production of every kind of ecclesiastical ornament the tradesman was preferred to the artist.

"To remedy this," said Martyn many years afterwards, " I hit upon an expedient so simple that the wonder it excited at the time has always puzzled me since. It was nothing more than to proclaim that the artists in Ireland should decorate churches. . . . I showed how the only demand for art in Ireland was from the churches. . . . I succeeded in persuading Mr. T. P. Gill to settle in the School of Art, Mr. Childe, a pupil of the celebrated Christopher Whall, and a most efficient teacher who since 1903 has trained many an Irish artist in his stained glass school. I also at the same time suggested to Miss Purser the advisability of opening a studio where he should be the chief artist. At first she was inclined to jib; but being a woman of great business capacity as well as an artist, who, of course, would understand the situation, she took the hint [p.357] and now she and his pupils at An Tur Gloine have been painting for several years many beautiful storied windows. That great man, the late Archbishop Healy when Bishop of Clonfert, was the first to allow the artists to 'experimentalise' in his cathedral at Loughrea. The work was carried on by his successor Bishop O'Dea, with the result that few modern churches can compare with it in the fine taste of its interior ornament and furniture. Among its many fine works, the Virgin and Child by Mr. John Hughes, and the altar rails with their bold and varied carvings by Mr. Shortall, are especially noticeable. There may be more beautiful altar rails in existence, but all I know is I have never seen more beautiful.

" The side altars and iron and woodwork were designed by Mr. W. A. Scott, Professor of Architecture in the National University. . . ."

And Martyn did more than agitate and advise.

"I am exceedingly grateful to you for your magnificent contribution to our new church at Loughrea," wrote Dr. Healy. "You are the first 'outsider' from whom we received anything, and the example will have an excellent effect."

But there was no question of Martyn being responsible for the decoration of the Cathedral.. The responsibility fell on the different bishops. Thus Dr. O'Dea, who succeeded Dr. Healy in 1903, remained in touch with Martyn, but he acted on his own judgment even when Martyn did not agree. The latter had his contrairinesses. He would not, for instance approve of any Stations except with wooden crosses. It was Dr. O'Dea who undertook the furnishing of the cathedral. And Dr. O'Dea who brought in Scott instead of Byrne as architect. And we shall see that, after Martyn's death, in 1924 the scheme of decoration at Loughrea continued to develop, if possible, more beautifully than ever.

However, that was the beginning. It was a good beginning, the good beginning that in theory is half the battle, but that often in practice rather leads to anticlimax. There was no anti-climax at Loughrea. Far from it. The great work has gone on and on, right to this day. Indeed it could be claimed that, even artistically, it has gone accelerando , for probably the supreme masterpiece of the whole decoration is Michael Healy's cataclysmic Last Judgment window which was completed, as a companion to his slightly earlier and scarcely less overwhelming Ascension, only a short time before the great artist's death in 1941. Healy's whole career as a stained glass artist can be followed at Loughrea. In fact almost the whole history of The Tower of Glass (An Túr Gloine) can be traced there, from the first shy but gallant effort in the true technique of stained glass by Sarah Purser herself—a sympathetic little St. Brendan panel in the porch—down to the tenderly majestic St. Brigid which was executed after Healy's death by Miss Evie Hone, the latest of our painters to turn to stained glass and now, especially since her triumph at the New York World's Fair in 1939, internationally recognised as one of the world's greatest living artists in the medium. But I would need to enumerate the whole noble series of windows at Loughrea, for they are of major importance in the history of Irish art.

First of all, there are the three windows in the apse, representing the Annunciation, the Agony in the Garden, and the Resurrection. All are by Mr. Childe and they are of special significance as marking the technical point of departure of the Irish stained glass movement. As one would expect in the work of a pupil of Christopher Whall, Pre-Raphaelite in [p.360] fluence may be traced in these windows. But, fortunately, that influence did not extend as the Irish movement developed. Sarah Purser's Paris training had immunised her against Pre-Raphaelitism, and when we come to Healy's work we shall find that he, too, was free of it. An excellent teacher and a good practitioner, Childe had not much purely artistic invention and the sacred personages represented in these windows in the apse lack any great depth of characterisation. Just as the composition is conventionally well-balanced, so the figures are conventionally devotional. But the convention Childe had been taught was a serious convention and the figures are not unworthy. What gives them vital quality is not, however, a matter of facial expression or gesture but the fact that they are realised in terms of the true stained glass medium. They have life to a degree which must have been startling to the churchgoers of forty years ago when the figures in what passed for stained glass had no more life than if they were mere coloured paper representations pasted on to the other side of the glass. In the Loughrea windows the light is transmuted in its passage through every atom of the glass. And as the light outside changes, the process of transmutation changes with it, and thus every line, and more particularly every colour, takes on the quality of life. It is as though the figures breathed, the trees stirred, the stones glistened. And then the artist added something else. For in all these windows there are passages in the background which, where one would expect to find sky and cloud, are so stylised in treatment as to convey a breath-taking impression of winged presences, an impression which obviously adds considerably to the religious effect of each scene depicted and of the windows as a whole. If these passages are Childe's own invention he deserves more credit than has hitherto been allowed him as a felicitous innovator in stained glass. But other versions of these windows exist in a side chapel in Canterbury cathedral,originating presumably in Whall's studio. And so much of Childe's later work through the country belongs to the category of pleasing convention that one tends to assume as a matter of course that he borrowed the idea from Whall somebody else and adapted it to his own purposes here. But the very least one can say is that whether it be invention or adaptation it is extrordinarily effective.

Where one need have no reserves in praising these same passages is in the technical cunning displayed in the colouring of them. For they are of a very bright silvery tone with a mere touch of shading here and there, and as they are, in places, of considerable width they give adequate light to the sanctuary. Had they been deeper in tone the beauty of the sanctuary and its fittings would have been less clearly visible, and the sanctuary would have been less suitable for liturgical purposes. Finally there is the fact that the sanctuary is at the south, not the east, of the church, so that the lake lies behind it. It can be imagined, therefore, how the silvery tone of these passages of the windows is modified and takes on added loveliness as the southern light is refracted from the water outside.

Childe's other windows are two in the baptistery, a Baptism in Jordan and a St. Ita (who has her nephew and foster-child, the baby St. Brendan, playing with an angel at her feet); and two lights in the nave, a St. Patrick and Centurion of Great Faith. The last, with its burnt crimson tone is probably the finest in colour, but the best things in all these windows are matters of drawing. One recalls the loveliness of the [p.361] baby figures in the St. Ita window and the gentle stateliness and sensitive hands of St. Ita herself; and in the Baptism in Jordan the actual arrangement of the figures, the composition. This last, to one coming from Dublin, is particularly noticeable, for in a certain well-known Dublin two-light window of the same subject, executed by a young English artist who spent some years over here, the figure of Our Lord occupies one light, that of St. John the other, and the outstretched arm of the baptising saint is cut in two by the dividing stone mullion. The effect, in spite of the window's many merits is bad. At Loughrea, Childe shows a more felicitous sense of design. He has our Lord and St. John in one light and two angels looking on reverently at the baptismal ceremony in the other. The resulting effect suggests a collectedness of mind that is undisturbed by any clumsiness of gesture or fumbling for space.

I should have thought that the hands of St. Ita were the work of a woman artist. And as a matter of fact I feel some slight perplexity about the attributions of these early windows to the different artists. The Tower of Glass list of the principal works produced in its studios between 1903 and 1928 gives the apse (apart from a St. Simeon by Michael Healy), and baptistery windows to Childe; and four others to Sarah Purser. I take it then that besides the St. Brendan in the porch Miss Purser executed or at any rate designed the Crucifixion and the Nativity in the east transept. But the fourth I was unable to identify. There is a two-light window of St. Francis and St. Clare in the south wall of the east transept which is Healyesque but hardly Healy. Mr.C.P. Curran does not include it in the list of works appended to his long and valuable obituary article on Healy in the March, 1942, issue of Studies. Nor is it given in the Tower list. The Healyesque passages are in the St. Francis light, notably the brilliant background and the saint's robe. On the other hand the St. Clare is relatively conventional—though it too has something of the true stained glass fire, as for instance in the orange-coloured halo. Now, Sarah Purser, however forceful a character, was not, artistically, a strong personality. In her work she always tended to reflect the influence of whatever artist interested her at the moment. And so, looking for that fourth window, I wondered for a moment whether the Franciscan window could possibly have been designed by Sarah Purser in a Healyising phase. For the old lady's own sake I almost wished it were possible, so that we should have to admit that once at least she showed herself capable of approaching the heights of stained glass art. Those who knew her and who, because of her persistent courage, put up with her scolding and her contrairiness, would find it pleasant to do that. In spite of her devastating cynicism, the humble pride she took in her association with the wonderful religious art of Loughrea Cathedral surely counts to her for merit. I have been told that in her later years she would drive down there and soften at the sight of the. beautiful things designed and executed for the glory of God by the artists of the studio which, at Martyn's suggestion, she had set up long before. Altogether, Loughrea makes one think that she had more to do with the Holy Spirit than in her silly fear of sentimentality she would ever have admitted in her lifetime. Certainly, when one turns to the big Nativity window, which it is to be presumed is hers, one is surprised by a quality in the figure of the kneeling Madonna, which somehow seems like a revelation of the more sympathetic elements in Sarah Purser's own character. For it must be only rarely in the history [p.362] of art that there has been a Madonna looking at once so virginal and so maternal. If Sarah Purser could make that act of homage to the Virgin Mother of God, her surface scepticism was ultimately of small importance. As for the St. Francis and St. Clare, it transpired afterwards that it was by Childe, Childe Healyising; and I did not, as I say, succeed in identifying Miss Purser's fourth window. Because of the hands I wonder whether she may not have had something to do with the St. Ita . Or could it be that in the Tower list she gave herself credit for the pendant to the little St. Brendan panel, which she was always meaning to do but never, in fact, did? That seems hardly likely. The puzzle remains.

So we come to the Healy windows. These began with the single-light St. Simeon in the baptistery (1904). Then came the small circular windows above the side-altars, on the Epistle side a Madonna and Child and on the Gospel side a charming, almost humorous, study in pious domesticity. Our Lady is doing a piece of needlework and the Holy Child (as a growing boy) and St. Joseph are very solemnly absorbed in the mystery of what feminine hands can do. One smiles, but of course there are mystical overtones here. We may, I think, take it that the artist had in mind some tenderly loving reference to the seamless robe which in Christian lore is frequently regarded as symbolical of the Hypostatic Union.

The next Healy windows erected at Loughrea are the St. Anthony and the St. John in the east aisle. The St. John (1927) shows Healy at the height of his powers both as artist and craftsman with the apocalyptic note beginning to strike clearly both in the expression of the evangelist and in the technical handling throughout, the eagle, particularly, being a wonderful creation in colours of fire and gold. The St. Anthony beside it is slightly earlier in date which perhaps explains why it is more nearly humanising in temper, but it, too, has great splendour and the knight kneeling at the saint's feet is a sensitively beautiful piece of artistic imagining.

Opposite, in the western aisle are Christ the King (1930) and Our Lady Queen of Heaven (1934). With these we are prepared for the final trancendental iconostasis of the Ascension and Last Judgment windows, the supreme and awe-inspiring masterpieces with which Healy completed his life's work. But indeed the Christ the King and Queen of Heaven are awe-inspiring enough in themselves, even if the artist had never gone any further. In these figures Healy seems to have renounced the humanism he had learned in Florence forty years earlier. He has eliminated everything in the way of expression except final, absolute, regality. Looking at these impassively majestic figures the idea inevitably suggests itself that national events in the preceding years, events in which Healy took a passionate interest established for him a clear conception of an ultimate, uncompromising righteousness, an absolute righteousness, that could not, of course, be associated with erring human nature but that could and should be attributed to divinity. Healy here seems to lay aside not only the humanism of the Renaissance but even the happy charity of the late Middle Ages. He brings back to religious iconography vital figures which, like the mosaic figures of Byzantine art in the period from the fifth to the eleventh centuries, are essentially imaged ideas. Here is the Christ Who, though He died for humanity prayed not for the World, and with Him, she whom the World has made the Mother of Sorrows but whom He made the crowned Queen of Heaven. The figures are of an incomparable, divinely [p.363] regal, splendour. Surely never before had Healy elaborated gorgeousness of colour to such a degree. The whole effect is overwhelming.

And then, those windows completed, Healy produced a St. Joseph window that, superficially considered, seems to be all humanism again. It was erected in 1935. (Though later in date than the Christ the King and Queen of Heaven , it is further down the aisle towards the door). Decoratively it is one of Healy's most magnificent achievements. as glowingly harmonious in colour as any amongst the masterpieces of his later years. And humanly it is all heart. The St. Joseph here, however, is not the Joseph in whom so many devotees have an affectionate but almost easygoing trust. This is a Joseph who knows the tragedy of the world and who has some special understanding of the destiny in the world of the Child Whom he carries in his arms and towards Whom his head inclines with such yearning tenderness. It is worth noting that, for Healy, St. Joseph was always a rewarding subject. One has only to recall the success with which he treated him in the 1916 St. Joseph window at Clongowes, as also in the first three of the Dolour windows in the same chapel which were all that he had completed at the time of his death. Considering how sentimentally Our Lord's foster-father is usually made to look, it is remarkable that an intellectual artist like Healy should, over twenty-five years, have found him one of the most richly inspiring of religious subjects.

Finally, there are Healy's two great three-light windows of The Ascension (1936) and The Last Judgment (1940), to which I have already referred. With the wonderful St. Augustine window in Dublin these are probably the crowning masterpieces of the Irish stained glass revival. And as they are still more sublime in theme than the St. Augustine , and as they show the artist rising to the more sublime heights their themes demanded, they must probably be ranked highest of all. Even in technique they seem to carry the art of stained glass as far as it could go, in at least one direction. The process of aciding, by which the light of day is, in the most minutely subtle way, juxtaposed with the most brilliant colours, and thus made to enhance their effect, is carried to such extreme lengths here that some of Healy's fellow-artists, and many of his more instructed lay admirers, too, began to be afraid lest, in his passionate virtuosity he should force the medium beyond its capacity. It is perhaps significant that Miss Hone, who may be taken as beginning where Healy left off, uses the aciding process very little. But each great artist knows his own know, and it may be recalled that similar fears to those expressed in regard to Healy's later work were once entertained as to the practice of oil painting by the ageing Titian and the ageing Rembrandt, and as to the practices in musical composition of the Beethoven of the Ninth Symphony and the last quartets; whereas nowadays the results in these instances are regarded as the most triumphant expressions in the arts of painting and music of the spirit of man. What remains self-evidently true in Healy's case is that in his last phase he still regarded his medium as subservient to the spiritual significance of his work. So we may presume that he refined upon it in order to be able to state that significance with still more clarity. He was the great artist he was, because he had not only nobility of imagination but nobility of mind, and striving to give imaginative expression to his perception of truth, he developed his technique until it could express with a maximum of effect what, towards the end of a lifetime of nearly seventy years, he had to [p.366] say. As perception continued to refine upon itself, how should the technique of expression not continue to refine upon itself too? The final result in both these windows is such that it may be years before anything approximating to their full significance is grasped by even a succession of sensitive observers. For myself I can only record that after visiting them repeatedly over a few days I feel no doubts about their importance as major masterpieces of art, and that I believe I should, as with all major masterpieces of art, go on making discoveries about them every time I returned to them. At present I can recall a unity of design and of colour composition that imposed itself immediately. I can recall an amazing wealth of figures, all in appropriate relationship to the occasion and to each other, as individuals, as groups, as gestures, as colours. I can vividly recall the obvious drama of the agonized faces of those who have come forth only to the resurrection of judgment as they are carried along the sea of perdition on the other side of the abyss that divides them from the hosts of heaven and from those who have come forth to the resurrection of life. And I can recall a single saintly or angelic figure here and there. But above all I can recall, in both The Ascension and The Last Judgment, a mystically impassive Christ Who is not active like Michelangelo's Christ in the Sistine, but quiet with a quiet that sets perception above action, a quiet that has something of the recollectedness of essential Being, something of detached understanding—and therefore more finality than movement could ever suggest. I have spoken of sensitive observers in connection with these windows. Perhaps I should have said rather sensitive commentators. For I have no doubt that as the years go on whole books will be written by men of many nations about Michael Healy and his work.

I have already referred to the Evie Hone St. Brigid window, executed after Healy's death. Miss Hone's work is more robust than Healy's. In temper she is nearer to thirteenth century France than to fifteenth century Florence. And she deals little in aciding. But her St. Brigid here, though a more vigorous figure than any of Healy's, is unquestionably a figure to inspire devotion, as, with a reticent gesture of compassion, she gives bread to a starving peasant girl. The girl, who is gold-haired, wears red. The saint is in blue. And the scene of their meeting is outside the walls of a Kildare that is all flaming pink and orange, a true holy city in a setting of wonderful greens. Clearly Miss Hone's work marks a vital new phase of the Irish stained glass revival.

Nearer to Healy in technique and temper is the big Hubert McGoldrick window of The Sacred Heart in the chapel of the same name. I would not say that this is a finer window than Mr. McGoldrick's lovely Resurrection in the mortuary chapel at Aughrim Street. The latter is silvery in tone, whereas at Loughrea the prevailing tone is a deep crimson—though there is a good deal of brown in Our Lord's robes and St. Margaret Mary wears purple and brown. But there is the same refinement of type and of expression, and the same sensitively devotional temper It is with the more humanistic side of Healy's genius that McGoldrick's work links up. But McGoldrick's work is recognisably McGoldrick's own. In its strangely tenuous way it has authentic character, and always makes its effect—I remember once being held up by a delicate little panel of The Baptism in Jordan at St. Patrick's in Cork and realising only afterwards that it was by Mr. McGoldrick. Perhaps delicacy is the word that best describes his work. One notices the [p.367] discretion with which he uses the aciding process in the window at Loughrea.

I suggested earlier that after Edward Martyn's death in 1924 the scheme of decoration at Loughrea continued to develop even more beautifully than before. And I venture to think that anyone studying these later Healy windows, from the 1927 St. John to the 1940 Last Judgment and then the McGoldrick and Evie Hone windows would agree. Who, it may be asked, was responsible? The answer is, of course, the ecclesiastical authority, in other words, the present Bishop of Clonfert, The Most Reverend Dr. Dignan, who succeeded to the diocese in 1924, the very year that Martyn died. His Lordship had been interested in the cathedral before ever he became bishop. Indeed he took a lively interest, as he still does, in every phase of the Irish revival—it was not for nothing that the Black and Tans burned his house down just before the 1921 truce, though, providentially, Dr. Dignan happened to be attending to his priestly duties at the other end of his parish and thus probably escaped the terrible fate that Father Griffin had met the same hands shortly before. As an enthusiastic young priest he had made friends with Scott and others amongst the distinguished artists who worked at the cathedral in the early days, and it is obvious—we may judge by the results—that when he became bishop he decided that a major responsibility fell upon him to ensure that the embellishment of the cathedral, so auspiciously begun a quarter of a century earlier, should continue to be entrusted only to the finest artists available in Ireland. It is right that this should be put on record, but I know that if his Lordship reads this article there will be trouble in store for me. For he modestly insists on giving all the credit to Father Jennings whom he brought to Loughrea with him in 1924 (and who, at the time, was only a year ordained), as Administrator of the cathedral. But Father Jennings, who is still there, protests that he has only endeavoured to carry out the Bishop's wishes—so what can a mere layman do but leave them to their happy arguing, and, rejoicing in what, between them, they have done, praise God ?

They kept Michael Shortall, the sculptor, whose altar rails were so deservedly praised by Edward Martyn, hard at work. Mr. Shortall, the last of the early band, is fortunately still with us. He must be proud of his long association with the cathedral, and however he may try to train himself to a proper humility, it must be hard for him not to feel very proud of his own outstanding share in the great scheme of decoration. One would like to know which, of all his works at Loughrea, he sets most store by. Martyn was eloquent about the altar rails and they are undoubtedly very fine. Then there are corbels and capitals; there is the admirable baptismal font, a St. Brendan statue high up on the tower outside; and a monument to Father Griffin—less successful I think—over the grave of the martyred young priest. But popular taste tends to opt for the impressive and endearing half-length carving of an old woman with a rosary—one thinks of Cézanne's Vieille femme au chapelet—at the spring of the sanctuary arch of the crossing. Myself, I was hardly less taken with the corresponding figure at the opposite side which represents the young, St. Patrick carrying a lamb. Somehow one never thinks of the youth, who, during his six years on Slieve Mish, came to such a vivid awareness of God, as being a later Irish figure of the Good Shepherd. But Mr. Shortall had the lovely fancy and gave it lovely expression in stone. These two figures are simple and direct to the point of homeliness, and, meditating upon that fact, one [p.368] turns back instinctively to the masterly design of the altar rails and realises that, where Mr. Shortall chose to be simple, he chose deliberately, not from any lack of academic accomplishment.

He chose to be very simple indeed in his carvings of the Evangelists and of scenes from diocesan history, mostly the life of St. Brendan, on the capitals of the columns. Here he captures an almost mediæval naiveté, so that one is tempted to envy the children of Loughrea who, like the children of the towns of France in the Middle Ages, get their religious stories from easily understood carvings. Visitors to the cathedral may be glad to have a full list of the St. Brendan scenes depicted on the capitals of the columns in [t]he nave, so I give them here. (I have to thank Father O'Callaghan, C.C., Loughrea, for copying them for me from a memorandum by Mr. Shortall.) One begins with the column at the crossing on the Gospel side and works down to the door, then up on the Epistle side:

1. St. Brendan baptised by St Erc
2. On the night of his birth Erc saw Alltraighecuile, many angels in white, in a blaze of light.
3. Three purple wethers leaped out of fountain of his baptism as baptismal fees for young Brendan.
4. Angels in the guise of virgins foster the babe.

1. He remained five years under his fostermother, St. Ita.
2. St. Finian of Clonard teaches Brendan.
3. St. Erc teaches Brendan the psalms.
4. A rich landowner adopts Brendan as godson

1. St. Erc ordains Brendan.
2. Brendan plays on his harp surrounded by countless birds.
3. Brendan playing in his cell.
4. An angel meets him, orders him to write as he directs him the rules of a religious life.

1. Brendan embarks on ship.
2. Out in mid-ocean sail with large cross on it unfurled.
3. Island of Ailbe: they lead a sheep by the horns to celebrate Easter.
Goes to Mount Brandon and views angel directing westward.

1. While Mass in being said innumerable fishes swim round boat. A bird perches on prow of boat and respreads his wings in welcome.
2. An old man wasted from extreme age takes Brendan and leads him to the monastery. They feast.
3. Fight between dragon and dolphin.
4. "Towards them a serpent of the sea rushes swift as the wind most savagely."

1. An angel commands him to found Clonfert.
2. St. Ita borne by angels to receive the Blessed Sacrament from St. Brendan before her death.
3. Brother dies. Brendan's crozier is placed upon him by Bishop Moennen and he arises.
4. Brother plays on harp. Brendan takes the two wax balls from his ears and places them on his book.

1. Brendan selects St. Moennen to succeed him.
2. Brendan, Ruadhan and Bishop Senach proceed to Tara.
3. People from all districts come to be admitted to his monastery.
4. Raises a dead youth to life.

1. Dies in the arms of his sister, Brigga.
2. "I saw the heavens opened and a choir of angels descending to meet the soul of Brendan " (St. Columba).
3. Buried at Clonfert.
4. His body is piled on a wagon among goods with one brother in charge.

In addition to these St. Brendan scenes in the nave, there are some others also by Shortall, on the capitals of the transept columns. They also represent incidents in the history of the diocese [p.369] notably the calculation of the date of Easter. The tradition is that when, about the year 630, the worst period of barbarian invasions had passed, Pope Honorius the First, resuming contact with the Irish church, sent word as to the time at which, it had definitively been decided in Rome, Easter was to be celebrated; and the southern Irish bishops, immediately accepting the Roman decision, entrusted the working out of the readjustments necessary in the ecclesiastical calendar to a scientist-cleric of Clonfert diocese. (Incidentally this traditional version of the Easter question is confirmed by the researches of the French Benedictine scholar, Dom Louis Gougaud.) Mr. Shortall depicts the scene as he depicts all his narrative scenes with that directness and simplicity to which I have already referred and which imply a wide appeal, like the appeal to the whole medieval commune of the thirteenth century sculptors in works of a similar nature.

The transition from this type of sculpture to the type represented by John Hughes's marble Madonna and Child group in the Lady Chapel is dramatic. For there was nothing mediæval about Hughes. He belonged entirely to the Rennaissance. A great sculptor, he is yet not the type of genius who is happiest in the simple narration of communally understood stories. He produces archetypes individualistic, fastidiously graceful consciously aesthetic, above all, philosophic, rather in the Leonardesque way. His Madonna here is a beautiful lady, a royal lady, but, still more important, a thoughtfully beautiful, thoughtfully royal, lady. I doubt whether any previous Irish sculptor created a feminine figure of such rare beauty. One thinks of Smyth's gracefully cloaked Justice over the College Street portico of the Bank of Ireland , of the lovely figures of Ireland that Hogan modelled after his Roman wife. Cornelia Hogan had classical features and an expression of great sweetness. And her husband, like the great genius he was, made her the most gracious of goddesses. But the fairest daughter of the House of David , as imagined by Hughes, is more radiant and has a more intimate appeal. She is beautiful and royal and thoughtful, but she smiles as she shows us her smiling Baby. She offers us a share in Him. Tower of Ivory, House of Gold and Seat of Wisdom, she yet wants to be the Cause of Our joy. And Hughes could project it all so as to produce an immediate response in us.

It is a tragedy that this great Irish sculptor should be best known to his own countrymen by his heavily dignified, rather forbidding statue of the Famine Queen outside Leinster House. For there he had an unsympathetic subject. He treated it as it should be treated—if it had to be treated at all. That is to say he told the truth about it. Propaganda has imposed greatness on Queen Victoria, but one has only to read her own letters to realise that—considering her purely as a historical personage of course—she was utterly undeserving of it. She was small-minded, stupid, pig-headed, arrogant, bigoted—see her letter to Lord John Russell about Father Mathew—without magnanimity, and in her whole attitude to people outside her own narrow world, obsessed with self-conceit. What could Hughes do? In life she was a little thing, only four-foot-ten in height. Presumably as a concession to the greatness racket, Hughes made her an outsize figure physically. For the rest, he gave her such vitality as truth could give. The result is a statue that has the vitality of truth. It is probably the most vitally truthful statement about Queen Victoria in all the art devoted to her apotheosis. [p.370] Sculpturally it is probably better than any other statue of her. Certainly it is better than any I have seen in England or Scotland. But for a statue set up as a public ornament and for public delectation, goodness and beauty are necessary as well as truth. And to find these in Kildare Street one has to turn from the main personage of the group to the subsidiary figures, particularly to the exquisite figure of Ireland crowning the Irish soldier dying in the South African War. But it is still better to turn to the statue of Kickham in Tipperary. And best of all to turn to the Loughrea Madonna and Child . Here, the great sculptor worked con amore and created figures worthy of himself and worthy of his sublime subject. For his inspiration did not fail in dealing with the Christchild either. Again, as with the Madonna , the Face is even already charged with thought. But It also is a smiling Face. If the Child we see here was to grow up to repudiate the world which He identified with the sin that He hated, it is clear, nevertheless, that already, as a Baby, He loved sinners. It is equally clear that Hughes had deep understanding of the principle of divine love. After that it would be trivial to discuss such technical points as his treatment of grouping, draperies, etc. It needs only to say that in them all he reveals himself as a master.

Hughes's other major work at Loughrea is the bronze relief of The Resurrection behind Scott's plain but massively impressive high altar. This also is a masterpiece. But it raises a question in Christian iconography. As it is a question that arises also in connection with the work of that great Christian artist, Giovanni Bellini, I presume there is a satisfactory answer to it. But I have never seen it discussed. The point is this. The commemoration of the Resurrection of Our Lord is the greatest festival in the Church calendar. One would therefore expect artistic representations of the Resurrection to strike the note of triumph, the triumph of Our Lord over His enemies, of life over death, of goodness over evil, of forgiveness over sin. But, like Bellini in his famous picture of Christ Blessing after the Resurrection, now at the Louvre, Hughes represents Our Lord coming back from the dead with all the agony of Calvary still imprinted on His Features—He Who promised Paradise to the repentant thief for the actual day of the Crucifixion. Who has just brought all the souls in Limbo to the Paradise of His Own Presence; Who was to walk to Emmaus on Easter Sunday evening with disciples who presumably had seen Him on the Cross but who did not now recognise Him. If He revealed himself fully to them only later and momentarily it seems, nevertheless, clear that He was no longer the broken Christ of Calvary Hill. It is equally clear, however, that for centuries artists have been encouraged to combine the expression of Calvary with the fact of Resurrection. And this, like Giovanni Bellini in Venice is what Hughes does in Loughrea.

That aspect of the matter apart one has nothing but admiration for the Hughes group. The composition, the individual pained figures of Our Lord and the solicitous angels are all the work of an artist capable of stating sublimity supervening on tragedy—which is what this attitude to the Resurrection implies.

(Is it that joy in the Resurrection, that is ultimate joy, must, ineluctably, be based on understanding of Calvary. One thinks of Baudelaire, "Soyez beni, mon Dieu, qui donnez la souffrance?")

Besides the two major works, Hughes has a series of small bronze plaques set in the altar rails and sanctuary gate, and on the bishop's confessional. All are gems reminiscent of Donatello here and there, [p.372] but reminiscent in their combined naturalness and grace, not in any mere conventionalism or lack of authentic personal invention on the part of their creator.

The Stations at Loughrea, in opus sectile mosaic, by Ethel Rhind, have claims to being the finest set of Stations in any church anywhere. Miss Rhind will forgive me if I add that that is not a very extravagant claim. For it is generally agreed that the Stations as church decoration have tended to defeat artists everywhere. Tiepolo, practically the last of the Old Masters, was the only Old Master to undertake the problem of stating the Via Dolorosa as a tragedy in fourteen scenes. But Tiepolo was a great virtuoso in paint rather than a great religious or even a great humane artist, and in his Stations—they are in the sacristy of the Frari at Venice—he said little that he did not say better in his classical and profane works. In Harry Clarke's stained glass Stations at Lough Derg, the different stages of the Via Dolorosa are represented on tiny panels carried by figures of saints which, with their dazzling backgrounds, tend to monopolise one's attention. I have seen isolated studies for single stations by Seán O'Sullivan and by Evie Hone which were important. And Richard King's small-scale Stations, reproduced in the 194I Capuchin Annual, pointed the way to a solution, through pronounced stylisation, of the technical problem, a very difficult technical problem for artists, of sustaining visual interest in a drama which reaches its climax only at the twelfth scene. At Loughrea, Miss Rhind keeps closer to naturalism than Mr. King. There is hardly more stylisation than is imposed on her by her medium. But there is that much, and, as it works out, it is extremely valuable. Sensitive to the elements in art most congenial to mosaic, Miss Rhind tends as much as possible to make every Station literally a station a stop however momentary, on Our Lord's journey to Calvary. Mosaic lends itself to static better than it does to mobile effects so here, the idea of dramatic development is rejected for that of a sequence of subjects for meditation. It is a subtle distinction but thanks to the medium and to the artist's admirable use of it, the result is beautifully satisfactory.

And there is more than that. The wanly tragic scenes, with their pathetically dignified central Figure, are made an integral part of their architectural environment by being fitted into wall. Blue, grey and olive in tone with here and there a little white, they seem like so many passages where the neutral tone of the wall has flowered naturally into pale colour and into reminders of the church's function. The Connemara marble border or surround to each Station—it is nothing as assertive as a frame—is exactly the right hue and exactly the right width so that each scene depicted is isolated just as much as is necessary and yet visually related, again just as much as is necessary, to its mural background. The successful calculation of all these technical factors shows Miss Rhind is the possessor of rare artistic cunning, just as the forlorn pathos of the Station scenes themselves shows her to be a Christian artist of genuine sensibility Miss Rhind is probably best known through the country for her excellent work as a stained glass artist but I incline to think she will be remembered in ages to come primarily as the creator of the Loughrea Stations.

There are only two pictures in the cathedral. One, a Saint Margaret Mary by Francis O'Donoghue in the Sacred Heart Chapel, sensitively refined in drawing and colour, fits in admirably with the decoration as a whole. The other, a Pietà, attributed to Fra Bartholommeo [p.373] has had, for reasons of space, to be skied. Which is perhaps as well, for though it is difficult to study it properly, it would seem that it has an element of bravura which would make it look out of keeping with the rest of the decoration.

Finally besides the noble high altar already referred to, there is the wonderful cluster of sanctuary lamps designed by Scott. This, an almost mystically beautiful thing, could hardly, I imagine, be matched amongst modern works of art of the kind anywhere. Then, by the same great artist, there are two colossal yet graceful candelabra of solid brass which would worthily adorn the greatest church in the world. And in addition to all these, Scott designed the ironwork throughout the cathedral—it would, I think, take the ironwork designers of old Nuremberg, Nancy or Paris itself adequately to estimate his achievement here; and also the woodwork, pews, confessionals, etc., each and every one with its individual carvings revealing the artist's extraordinary and felicitous richness of invention.

And was the decoration of the floor of the sanctuary designed by him ? I have forgotten. I only remember that it included a lovely ship, perhaps St. Brendan's ship, perhaps the Navicella . . . .? You get dazed at Loughrea. I saw tabernacle doors and in the sacristy a magnificent Scott monstrance, and chalices and ciboria. And I saw some of the beautiful embroideries, banners, etc., executed by the Cuala Industries from designs by Jack B. Yeats, Mary Cottenham Yeats (Mrs. Jack B.) and Pamela Coleman Smith. But the craftwork and indeed the treasury generally would require a whole article to themselves.

At Loughrea, I was in the midst of a country where beautiful things have always been created, at Kilconnell, at Clontuskert, above all at Clonfert where the twelfth century architecture and twelfth century sculpture remind us that our fathers through the ages have been artists worthy to rank with the noblest in history. I think the twentieth century men and women who worked on the decoration of Loughrea Cathedral have shown themselves worthy descendants of their forbears and worthy heirs to their great heritage. I have here, in many words, enumerated their works. I have also ventured to judge their works. But now all the words are written and I come back to the thing for which there aren't any adequate words, the mysterious harmony that exists between all the works, the harmony that each one of them helps to create, yet that subdues them all to its own principle of being. And that principle of being? Wordless prayer? Blessedness? "There are no words," said Degas. No, there are no words.