Stained Glass at An Tur Gloine

A Machine-Readable Version

Thomas MacGreevy

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[p.435]

Once again one has to deplore the loss to Ireland of beautiful things produced in Ireland. Mr. Michael Healy has just finished three single-light stained glass windows for a church in Bardsey, and they are now on exhibition at the Tower of Glass in Upper Pembroke Street. I had seen windows by Mr. Healy before, but it was only when I saw his "Flight into Egypt " window in the Chapel at Clongowes Wood College two months ago that I realised what a masterly artist he could be. That is one of the finest windows in Ireland, and must be one of the finest pieces of modern stained glass anywhere. One would like to see it in a church in which there were no transparent windows. At Clongowes there is a transparent window almost facing and very close to it. Stained glass, of course, should have the light coming only from the outside. I have seen churches abroad — Barcelona Cathedral, for example — where the effect when one first steps inside is of darkness lit only by masses of the richest precious stones. And then gradually the designs of the windows come clear and the hieratic figures of The Blessed Virgin and the Saints and Prophets take shape, and the whole final effect becomes truly religious.

If only some of our Irish stained glass artists were given a whole church to decorate there is no doubt that they could achieve such an effect, too. Mr. Scott's Chapel in the Convent at Enniskillen had all its windows painted by Dublin artists in the early days of the Dublin stained glass revival, and though I think there is no doubt that finer work is being done by our artists now, it is questionable whether their work is seen to better advantage anywhere, for the scheme of decoration is practically completely unified. Effort has been made to keep everything in harmony. Similarly, though the harmony there is not complete, the early Harry Clarke windows in the Honan Hostel Chapel in Cork are seen to much greater advantage than many of his finer later windows which stand solitary in the midst of indifferent work in various churches in Great Britain and Ireland.

The three windows that Mr. Healy has on exhibition now have been done from the designs of Miss Wilhelmina Geddes, who, unfortunately, has been too ill to carry out the actual production of the windows herself. Mr. Healy has tried to be scrupulously fair to her designs, but inevitably something of the extraordinary force of Miss Geddes' own work has disappeared, and something of the peculiarly poetic quality of Mr. Healy's has crept in. One has to remember the beauty of the window at Clongowes which Mr. Healy designed and executed entirely with his own hands, and the great Crucifixion which Miss Geddes sent to England a year-and-a-half ago, or one would have said that the combination of the work of the two artists was perfect.

The subjects are The Baptism of Our Lord, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. The figures are rather less than half life size. The Resurrection, with its grave Central Figure and a wonderful broadly mapped out rich green, ruby and deep blue background, is perhaps the finest of the three, but the figure of Mary Magdalene at the foot of the Cross in the Crucifixion window is one of the finest studies of desolation conceivable, and the bowed figure of the Mother of the Lord above her is most tragic and moving. It is in this figure, perhaps, that Mr. Healy's fine sense of line has served him best, for it is drawn with quivering sensibility, and the treatment of the light but rich blue drapery on the bowed head is admirable. The Apostles, mostly with luminous crimson draperies, standing close about the foot of the Cross, are also splendidly drawn.

The Baptism window is quite as fine, and the smaller figures in it are particularly charming. It is a pity that the exhibition is only open for three days, because everybody interested in the production of religious art by Irishmen should see these windows before we lose them for good.