Pye, Patrick
Patrick Pye (1928–2018) was born in Winchester and moved with his mother to Ireland in 1932. At secondary school he first encountered, via a library book, the art of El Greco which would leave a lasting impression on him. Pye undertook his first stained glass commission, a somewhat abstract depiction of St Brigid, for St Brendan’s cathedral, Loughrea, County Galway in 1957 most likely made in An Túr Gloine where his friend Patrick Pollen was renting studio space.
With a deep interest in religion and spirituality he converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism in 1963. Alongside his career as a painter and etcher of still lives, landscapes and religious subjects he created around thirty-four windows for seventeen locations, all but one on the island of Ireland, the last of which was in 1998. Responding to a question about the purpose of stained glass in contemporary churches he opined ‘I think it has the function of moving us, of touching our hearts, of making a world in the window which is very different to the world we live in. The colours are strong. It’s a wonderful medium for expression…’ (quoted in ‘Vocation and Vision’, see below).
Sources:
Anon, The Lady Chapel, St Thomas More’s Church, Dulwich (dedication leaflet, 1970. Church archive)
Brian McAvera, ‘Vocation and Vision’, Irish Arts Review (Spring, 2009).
Brian McAvera’s biographical note on Pye in the Gazetteer of Irish Stained Glass (Irish Academic Press, 2021)
