Stained Glass Work: A text-book for students and workers in glass

Man's work upon earth is all like that. The things are there under his very nose, but he never discovers them till some accident shows them; how many centuries of sailing, think you, passed by before men knew that the tides went with the moon?

Why then write a book at all, since it is not the best way?

Speaking for myself only, the reasons appear to be: First, because none of these crafts is at present taught in its fulness in any ordinary shop, and I would wish to give you at least a longing to learn yours in that fulness; and, second, because it seems also very advisable to interest the general reader in this question of the complete teaching of the crafts to apprentices. To insist on the value and necessity of the daily and hourly lessons that come from the constant presence, handling, and use of all the tools and materials, all the apparatus and all the conditions of the craft, and from the interchange of ideas amongst those who are working, side by side, making fresh discoveries day by day as to what materials will do under the changes that occur in conditions that are ever changing.

However, one must not linger further over these little matters, and it now becomes my task to return to the great leading principles and try to deal with them, and the first cardinal principle of stained-glass work surely is that of Colour.

CHAPTER XVI

OF COLOUR

But how hopeless to deal with it by way of words in a book where actual colour cannot be shown!

Nevertheless, let us try.

… One thinks of morning and evening; … of clouds passing over the sun; of the dappled glow and glitter, and of faint flushes cast from the windows on the cathedral pavement; of pearly white, like the lining of a shell; of purple bloom and azure haze, and grass-green and golden spots, like the budding of the spring; of all the gaiety, the sparkle, and the charm.

And then, as if the evening were drawing on, comes over the memory the picture of those graver harmonies, in the full glow of red and blue, which go with the deep notes of the great organ, playing requiem or evening hymn.

Of what use is it to speak of these things? The words fall upon the ear, but the eye is not filled.

All stained-glass gathers itself up into this one subject; the glory of the heavens is in it and the fulness of the earth, and we know that the showing forth of it cannot be in words.

Is it any use, for instance, to speak of these primroses along the railway bank, and those silver buds of the alder in the hollow of the copse?

One thinks of a hint here and a hint there; the very sentences come in fragments. Yet one thing we may say securely: that the practice of stained-glass is a very good way to learn colour, or as much of it as can come by learning.

For, consider:—

A painter has his colour-box and palette;

And if he has a good master he may learn by degrees how to mix his colour into harmonies;

Doing a little first, cautiously;

Trying the problem in one or two simple tints; learning the combinations of these in their various degrees of lighter or darker:

Exhausting, as much as he can, the possibilities of one or two pigments, and then adding another and another;

But always with a very limited number of actual separate ones to draw upon;

All the infinity of the whole world of colour being in his own hands, and the difficulty of dealing with it laid as a burden upon his own shoulders, as he combines, modifies, mixes, and dilutes them.

He perhaps has eight or ten spots of pure colour, ranged round his palette; and all the rest depends upon himself.

This gives him, indeed, one side of the practice of his art; and if he walks warily, yet daringly, step by step, learning day by day something more of the powers that lie in each single kind of paint, and as he learns it applying his knowledge, bravely and industriously, to add strength to strength, brightness to brightness, richness to richness, depth to depth, in ever clearer, fuller, and more gorgeous harmony, he may indeed become a great painter.

But a more timid or indolent man gets tired or afraid of putting the clear, sharp tints side by side to make new combinations of pure and vivid colour.

And even a man industrious, alert, and determined may lose his way and get confused amongst the infinity of choice, through being badly taught, and especially through being allowed at first too great a range, too wide a choice, too lavish riches.

A man so trained, so situated, so tempted, stands in danger of being contented to repeat old receipts and formulas over and over, as soon as he has acquired the knowledge of a few.

Or, bewildered with the lavishness of his means and confused in his choice, tends to fall into indecision, and to smear and dilute and weaken.

I cannot help thinking that it is to this want of a system of gradual teaching of the elementary stages of colour in painting that we owe, on the one side, the fashion of calling irresolute and undecided tints "art" colours; and, on the other hand, the garishness of our modern exhibitions compared with galleries of old paintings. For Titian's burning scarlet and crimson and palpitating blue; and Veronese's gold and green and white and rose are certainly not "art colours"; and I think we must feel the justice and truth of Ruskin's words spoken regarding a picture of Linnell's:—

"And what a relief it is for any wholesome human sight, after sickening itself among the blank horror of dirt, ditchwater, and malaria, which the imitators of the French schools have begrimed our various Exhibition walls with, to find once more a bit of blue in the sky and a glow of brown in the coppice, and to see that Hoppers in Kent can enjoy their scarlet and purple—like Empresses and Emperors." (Ruskin, "Royal Academy Notes," 1875.)

From this irresolution and indecision and the dull-colour school begotten of it on the one hand, and from garishness on the other, stained-glass is a great means of salvation; for in practising this art the absolute judgment must, day by day, be exercised between this and that colour, there present before it; and the will is braced by the necessity of constant choice and decision. In short, by many of the modern, academical methods of teaching painting, and especially by the unfortunate arrangement, where it exists, of a pupil passing under a succession of different masters, I fear the colour-sense is perplexed and blunted; while by stained-glass, taught, as all art should be, from master to apprentice, while both make their bread by it, the colour-sense would be gradually and steadily cultivated and would have time to grow.

This at least seems certain: that all painters who have also done stained-glass, or indeed any other decorative work in colour, get stronger and braver in painting from its practice. So worked Titian, Giorgione, Veronese; and so in our days worked Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox-Brown, Morris; and if I were to advise and prate about what is, perhaps, not my proper business, I would say, even to the student of oil-painting, "Begin with burnt-umber, trying it in every degree with white; transparent over opaque and opaque over transparent; trying how near you can get to purple and orange by contrast (and you will get nearer than you think); then add sienna at one end and black at the other to enlarge the range;—and then get a set of glass samples".

I have said that stained-glass is "a great means of salvation," from irresolution and indecision on the one hand and from garishness on the other; but it is only a means—the fact of salvation lies always in one's own hands—for we must, I fear, admit that "garishness" and "irresolution" are not unknown in stained-glass itself, in spite of the resources and safeguardings we have attributed to the material. Speaking, therefore, now to stained-glass painters themselves, we might say that these faults in their own art, as too often practised in our days, arise, strange as it may seem, from ignorance of their own material, that very material the knowledge of which we have just been recommending as a safeguard against these very faults to the students of another art.

And this brings us back to our subject.

For the foregoing discussion of painters' methods has all been written to draw a comparison and emphasise a contrast.

A contrast from which you, student of stained-glass, I hope may learn much.

For as we have tried to describe the methods of the painter in oil or water colours, and so point out his advantages and disadvantages, so we would now draw a picture of the glass-painter at work; if he works as he should do.

For the painter of pictures (we said) has his colour-box of a few pigments, from which all his harmonies must come by mixing them and diluting them in various proportions, dealing with infinity out of a very limited range of materials, and required to supply all the rest by his own skill and memory.

Coming each day to his work with his palette clean and his colours in their tubes;

Beginning, as it were, all over again each time; and perhaps with his heart cold and his memory dull.

But the glass-painter has his specimens of glass round him; some hundreds, perhaps, of all possible tints.

He has, with these, to compose a subject in colour;

There is no getting out of it or shirking it;

He places the bits side by side, with no possibility (which the palette gives) of slurring or diluting or dulling them; he must choose from the clear hard tints;

And he has the whole problem before him;

He removes one and substitutes another;

"This looks better;" "That is a pleasant harmony;" "Ah! but this makes it sing!"

He gets them into groups, and combines them into harmonies, tint with tint, group with group:

If he is wise he has them always by him;

Always ready to arrange in a movable frame against the window;

He cuts little bits of each; he waxes them, or gums them, into groups on sheets of glass;

He tries all his effects in the glass itself; he sketches in glass.

If he is wise he does this side by side with his water-colour sketch, making each help the other, and thinking in glass; even perhaps making his water-colour sketch afterwards from the glass.

Is it not reasonable?

Is it not far more easy, less dangerous?

He has not to rake in his cold and meagre memory to fish out some poor handful of all the possible harmonies;

To repeat himself over and over again.

He has all the colours burning round him; singing to him to use them; sounding all their chords.

Is it not the way? Is it not common sense?

Tints! pure tints! What great things they are.

I remember an old joke of the pleasant Du Maurier, a drawing representing two fashionable ladies discussing the afternoon's occupation. One says: "It's quite too dull to see colours at Madame St. Aldegonde's; suppose we go to the Old Masters' Exhibition!"

Rather too bad! but the ladies were not so altogether frivolous as might at first appear. I am afraid Punch meant that they were triflers who looked upon colour in dress as important, and colour in pictures as a thing which would do for a dull day. But they were not quite so far astray as this! There are other things in pictures besides colour which can be seen with indifferent light. But to match clear tint against clear tint, and put together harmonies, there is no getting away from the problem! It is all sheer, hard exercise; you want all your light for it; there is no slurring or diluting, no "glazing" or "scumbling," and it should form a part of the teaching, and yet it never does so, in our academies and schools of art. A curious matter this is, that a painter's training leaves this great resource of knowledge neglected, leaves the whole thing to memory. Out of all the infinite possible harmonies only getting what rise in the mind at the moment from the unseen. While ladies who want to dress beautifully look at the things themselves, and compare one with another. And how nicely they dress. If only painters painted half as well. If the pictures in our galleries only looked half as harmonious as the crowd of spectators below them! I would have it part of every painter's training to practise some craft, or at least that branch of some craft, which compels the choosing and arranging, in due proportions for harmony, of clear, sharp glowing colours in some definite material, from a full and lavish range of existing samples. It is true that here and there a painter will arise who has by nature that kind of instinct or memory, or whatever it is, that seems to feel harmonies beforehand, note by note, and add them to one another with infallible accuracy; but very few possess this, and for those who lack I am urging this training. For it is a case of

"the little more and how much it is,

And the little less and what worlds away."

Millais hung a daring crimson sash over the creamy-white bed-quilt, in the glow of the subdued night-lamp, in his picture of "Asleep," and we all thought what a fine thing it was. But we have not thought it so fine for the whole art world to burst into the subsequent imitative paroxysm of crashing discords in chalk, lip-salve, and skim-milk, which has lasted almost to this day.

At any rate, I throw out this hint for pupils and students, that if they will get a set of glass samples and try combinations of colour in them, they will have a bracing and guiding influence, the strength of which they little dream of, regarding one of the hardest problems of their art.

This for the student of painting in general: but for the glass-painter it is absolutely essential—the central point, the breath-of-life of his art.

To live in it daily and all day.

To be ever dealing with it thus.

To handle with the hands constantly.

To try this piece, and that piece, the little more and the little less.

This is the be-all and end-all, the beginning and the end of the whole matter, and here therefore follow a few hints with regard to it.

And there is one rule of such dominating importance that all other hints group themselves round it; and yet, strangely enough, I cannot remember seeing it anywhere written down.

Take three tints of glass—a purple, let us say, a crimson, and a green.

Let it be supposed that, for some reason, you desire that this should form a scheme of colour for a window, or part of a window, with, of course, in addition, pure white, and probably some tints more neutral, greenish-whites and olives or greys, for background.

You choose your purple (and, by-the-bye, almost the only way to get a satisfactory one, except by a happy accident now and then, is to double gold-pink with blue; this is the only way to get a purple that will vibrate, palpitating against the eye like the petal of a pansy in the sun). Well, you get your purple, and you get your green—not a sage-green, or an "art-green," but a cold, sharp green, like a leaf of parsley, an aquamarine, the tree in the "Eve" window at Fairford, grass in an orchard about sunset, or a railway-signal lamp at night.

Your crimson like a peony, your white like white silk; and now you are started.

You put slabs of these—equal-sized samples, we will suppose—side by side, and see "if they will do."

And they don't "do" at all.

Take away the red.

The green and the purple do well enough, and the white.

But you want the red, you say.

Well, put back a tenth part of it.

And how now?

Add a still smaller bit of pale pink.

And how now?

Do you see what it all means? It means the rule we spoke of, and which we may as well, therefore, now announce:

"Harmony in colour depends not only upon the arranging of right colours together, but the arranging of the right quantities and the right degrees of them together."

To which may be added another, à propos of our bit of "pale pink."

The harshest contrasts, even discords, may often be brought into harmony by added notes.

I believe that these are the two, and I would even almost say the only two, great leading principles of the science of colour, as used in the service of Art; and we might learn them, in all their fulness, in a country walk, if we were simple enough to like things because we like them, and let the kind nurse, Nature, take us by the hand. This very problem, to wit: Did you never see a purple anemone? against its green leaves? with a white centre? and with a thin ring of crimson shaded off into pink? And did you never wonder at its beauty, and wonder how so simple a thing could strike you almost breathless with pure physical delight and pleasure? No doubt you did; but you probably may not have asked yourself whether you would have been equally pleased if the purple, green, and red had all been equal in quantity, and the pale pink omitted.

I remember especially in one particular window where this colour scheme was adopted—an "Anemone-coloured" window—the modification of the one splash of red by the introduction of a lighter pink which suggested itself in the course of work as it went along, and was the pet fancy of an assistant—readily accepted.

The window in question is small and in nowise remarkable, but it was in the course of a ride taken to see it in its place, on one of those glorious mornings when Spring puts on all the pageantry of Summer, that the thoughts with which we are now dealing, and especially the thoughts of the infinite suggestion which Nature gives in untouched country and of the need we have to drink often at that fountain, were borne in upon the writer with more than usual force.

To take in fully and often the glowing life and strength and renewal direct from Nature is part of every man's proper manhood, still more then of every artist's artistry and student's studentship.

And truly 'tis no great hardship to go out to meet the salutary discipline when the country is beautiful in mid-April, and the road good and the sun pleasant. The Spring air sets the blood racing as you ride, and when you stop and stand for a moment to enjoy these things, ankle-deep in roadside grass, you can seem to hear the healthy pulses beating and see the wavy line of hills beating with them, as you look at the sun-warmed world.

It is good sometimes to think where we are in the scheme of things, to realise that we are under the bell-glass of this balmy air, which shuts us in, safe from the pitch-dark spaces of infinite cold, through which the world is sweeping at eighteen miles a second; while we, with all our little problems to solve and work to do, are riding warm by this fireside, and the orange-tip butterflies with that curious pertinacity of flight which is speed without haste are keeping up their incessant, rippling patrol, to and fro along the length of every sunny lane, above the ditch-side border of white-blossomed keck!

What has all this to do with stained-glass?

Everything, my boy! Be a human! For you have got to choose your place in things, and to choose on which side you will work.

A choice which, in these days, more than ever perhaps before, is one between such things as these and the money-getting which cares so little for them. I have tried to show you one side by speaking of a little part of what may be seen and felt on a spring morning, along a ridge of untouched hills in "pleasant Hertfordshire:"1 if you want to see the other side of things ride across to Buntingford, and take the train back up the Lea Valley. Look at Stratford (and smell it) and imagine it spreading, as no doubt it will, where its outposts of oil-mill and factory have already led the way, and think of the valley full up with slums, from Lea Bridge to Ponders End! For the present writer can remember—and that not half a lifetime back—Edmonton and Tottenham, Brondesbury and Upton Park, sweet country villages where quiet people lived and farmed and gardened amidst the orchards, fields, and hawthorn lanes.

Here now live, in mile after mile of jerry-building, the "hands" who, never taught any craft or work worthy of a man, spend their lives in some little single operation that, as it happens, no machine has yet been invented to perform; month after month, year after year, painting, let us say, endless repeats of one pattern to use as they are required for the borders of pious windows in the churches of this land.

This is the "other side of things," much commended by what is looked on as "robust common sense"; and with this you have—nothing to do. Your place is elsewhere, and if it needs be that it seems an isolated one, you must bear it and accept it. Nature and your craft will solve all; live in them, bathe in them to the lips; and let nothing tempt you away from them to measure things by the standard of the mart.

Let us go back to our sunny hillside. "It is good for us to be here," for this also is Holy Ground; and you must indeed be much amongst such things if you would do stained-glass, for you will never learn all the joy of it in a dusty shop.

"So hard to get out of London?"

But get a bicycle then;—only sit upright on it and go slow—and get away from these bricks and mortar, to where we can see things like these! those dandelions and daisies against the deep, green grass; the blazing candles of the sycamore buds against the purple haze of the oak copse; and those willows like puffs of grey smoke where the stream winds. Did you ever? No, you never! Well—do it then!

But indeed, having stated our principles of colour, the practice of those principles and the influence of nature and of nature's hints upon that practice are infinite, both in number and variety. The flowers of the field and garden; butterflies, birds, and shells; the pebbles of the shore; above all, the dry seaweeds, lying there, with the evening sun slanting through them. These last are exceedingly like both in colour and texture, or rather in colour and the amount of translucency, to fine old stained-glass; so also are dead leaves. But, in short, the thing is endless. The "wine when it is red" (or amber, as the case may be), even the whisky and water, and whisky without water, side by side, make just those straw and ripe-corn coloured golden-yellows that are so hard to attain in stained-glass (impossible indeed by means of yellow-stain), and yet so much to be desired and sought after.

Will you have more hints still? Well, there are many tropical butterflies, chiefly among the Pierinf, with broad spaces of yellow dashed with one small spot or flush of vivid orange or red. Now you know how terrible yellow and red may be made to look in a window; for you have seen "ruby" robes in conjunction with "yellow-stain," or the still more horrible combination where ruby has been acided off from a yellow base. But it is a question of the actual quality of the two tints and also of their quantity. What I have spoken of looks horrible because the yellow is of a brassy tone, as stain so often is, especially on green-white glasses, and the red inclining to puce—jam-colour. It is no use talking, therefore, of "red and yellow"—we must say what red and what yellow, and how much of each. A magenta-coloured dahlia and a lemon put together would set, I should think, any teeth on edge; yet ripe corn goes well with poppies, but not too many poppies—while if one wing of our butterfly were of its present yellow and the other wing of the same scarlet as the spot, it would be an ugly object instead of one of the delights of God. It is interesting, it is fascinating to take the hint from such things—to splash the golden wings of your Resurrection Angel as he rolls away the stone with scarlet beads of sunrise, not seen but felt from where you stand on the pavement below. I want the reader to fully grasp this question of quantity, so I will instance the flower of the mullein which contains almost the very tints of the "lemon," and the "dahlia" I quoted, and yet is beautiful by virtue of its quantities: which may be said to be of a "lemon" yellow and yet can bear (ay! can it not?) the little crimson stamens in the heart of it and its sage-green leaves around.

And there is even something besides "tint" and "quantity." The way you distribute your colour matters very much. Some in washes, some in splashes, some in spots, some in stripes. What will "not do" in one way will often be just right in the other: yes, and the very way you treat your glass when all is chosen and placed together—matt in one place, film in another, chequering, cross-hatching, clothing the raw glass with texture and bringing out its nature and its life.