Art
[A DUBLIN SCHOOL OF STAINED GLASS] Ax appreciable number of people even outside Ireland know that in the period of political disillusion which followed the Parnell split, several movements started. Literature, which demands least outfit (for pen and ink are cheap) came first : Mr. Yeats and A. E. led the way ; drama next, with Synge and Lady Gregory added to Yeats and the Abbey players. Nobody questions the success of these two developments ; and everyone in Ireland is aware that they kept touch with the Gaelic League on the one hand, and on the other with Sir Horace Plunkett's propaganda of co-operation. There was indeed a common purpose running through all ; for the honour of Ireland, we were to try to make something creditable, and stamped with national character ; we were also to find new ways of employment in the country. Perhaps that is why no person has made- much money out of any of these enterprises. That common feature is present also in another kindred attempt whose twenty-fifth anniversary was celebrated in Dublin last week; by a little ceremony in honour of Miss Sarah Purser and her fellow workers in Tin. Gloinne, which means the Tower of Glass. It is a success to have launched an artistic undertaking which for twenty-five years has paid a living wage to a group of artists and three or four skilled craftsmen, and to haVe done this with a starting capital of five hundred pounds. Nobody has lost money ; the capital has been repaid, and replaced by a reserve fund out of profits ; but nobody has made more than a living. What has been made is a reputation among those who care for modern stained glass—or perhaps, rather, among those who as a rule dislike it.
The enterprise was launched and directed by a remarkable artist who realized the conditions which separate art from manufacture. In this particular workshop, each window is entirely and in every detail the work of one artist. The group of half a dozen co-operate, in the sense that they share the workshop and the running expenses and services of the craftsmen ; but for each window a design is submitted by one artist, who then makes the cartoon, lays out the detail of the leading, chooses the glass (choosing not only a sheet of glass, but fixing his pattern on to the part of the sheet he chooses, for the colour of glass varies in the piece). ; then, when the glass has been cut by the craftsman, the same artist paints it ; the craftsman fires it, the painting is renewed and revised ; then the leading is carried out by the craftsman but under the artist's direction, settling the thickness of the leads. There is no question here of employing one artist to paint the figures, while borders are left to others. It is one man's work—or one woman's—and has individual character throughout.
Miss Purser, who belongs to the generation trained in Paris mainly under the influence of Bastien Lepage, was the ablest portrait painter in Ireland long before 1902, when the Tower of Glass began. She learnt the glass technique and executed one window in the cathedral where the first important works of her school were placed ; in a few cases, designs of hers were carried out by the English artist-manager, Mr. Child, who came from the studio of Mr. Christopher Whall (sending him was chief of the many good turns done by that established artist in stained glass to the Irish beginners) ; but the completely indi- vidual productiOn gave better results and in the course of years abundance of native talent has been found. Mr. Healy and Mr. McGoldrick, Miss Ithind, Miss O'Brien have all of them works of note to their credit, some in glass, some in opus sectile. The greatest gift that the school revealed, however, was that of a woman, Miss W. M. Geddis, who, like so many conspicuous artists, is a Protestant Ulster woman. Health unhappily has forced her to migrate to London ; but in her work (perhaps the best is to be seen at Wallsend-on-the-Tyne) there is a revival of the mediaeval genius, yet never an imitation of it.
The trouble for an artist in stained glass is the diffusion of his work. Tar Gloinne has sent glass to Canada, to Boston, to New Zealand, even to Singapdre (where secular decorations were ordered by a wealthy Chinaman); but the essential thing is that, after twenty-five years, no county in Ireland is without an example of their glass ; and among their praisers have been the late Cardinal O'Donnell and the present Primate of the Church of Ireland. It is not a little thing, in an art mainly religious, to have kept clear of controversial entanglements.
It is true that success has been only relative. During these twenty-five years, for one good piece of glass that has been ordered (in a poor country profuse in its expenditure on devotion) ten, no doubt, have been purchased from merchants of simpering manufacture. Still, the count of Tar Gloinne's work now runs far past six hundred windows executed ; and the best of these, both for colour and design, are not unworthy to be classed along with what has come (let us use our own standards) from James Stephens in prose, or from Sara Allgood
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