Pollen, Patrick
Patrick La Primaudaye Pollen (1928-2010) was a distinctive artist who worked in several media, including drawing and mosaic, but principally in stained glass.
Pollen was born in London into an artistic family. His father was a sculptor and his great-grand-father, John Hungerford Pollen, was a renowned architect, artist and author. His mother was a distinguished artist, whose family had a home in north County Dublin.
After military service Pollen studied art at the Slade School in London and the Académie Julian in Paris, where he first saw the stained glass in Notre Dame that so impressed him and set him on his path as an artist. Fascinated by Evie Hone’s stained glass east window in Eton College Chapel, Pollen moved to Ireland to study with her before renting premises at the old An Túr Gloine co-operative studio in Dublin.
Pollen’s work has many influences including his family, his Catholic faith and especially, Evie Hone, and through her Georges Rouault.
Pollen leaves are large body of work, especially in Ireland, where his largest commission was for 26 windows for Galway Cathedral. Although, the first work to bring Pollen public attention was a memorial window to the fifth Earl of Rosslyn, of Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh, in 1954.
Sources:
Patrick Pollen’s obituary by Louis Jebb, The Independent
Patrick Pollen by William Earley in The Gazetteer of Irish Stained Glass, revised new edition, edited by Nicola Gordon Bowe, David Caron & Michael Wynne (Irish Academic Press, 2021)
