Church of St Mary & All Saints, Sculthorpe, Norfolk
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Church of St Mary and All Saints, Creake Road, Sculthorpe, NR21 9NJRecommended by
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Three windows from the 1860s by three leading designersArtist, maker and date
Nave south window designed by Richard Turnill Bayne for Heaton, Butler & Bayne, 1862. Chancel south window designed by Ford Madox Brown, 1864, and Edward Burne-Jones, 1865-6, and made by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.Reason for highlighting
A good opportunity to compare the work of three leading artists in work they produced for the same building at roughly the same time.
The earliest window is at the west end of the south nave, and is by Richard Turnill Bayne for Heaton, Butler & Bayne, 1862. It shows the story of Ruth, with ancestors of Christ in roundels, and was exhibited at the 1862 International Exhibition.
Next are two 1864-65 panels by Ford Madox Brown, ‘Christ walking on the water’ and ‘Christ watching the disciples in a storm’, in the south wall of the chancel. The window was made by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Finally, in the east wall of the south aisle, is a design by Edward Burne-Jones, 1865-66. Burne-Jones designed several cartoons of Faith, Hope and Charity, of which this is the earliest. (This design was reused in 1873, but with a very different colour palette, for a window in the north transept of the chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge). The window was made by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Artist/maker notes
Heaton, Butler & Bayne
Clement Heaton (1824-82) and James Butler (1830-1913) went into partnership in London in 1855. A close relationship with the firm of Clayton & Bell led to Clayton’s outstanding pupil, Robert Turnill Bayne (1837-1915), joining the firm in 1862. Bayne, along with his younger colleague, Alfred Hassam (1843-69) drove the firm’s development, and their windows from 1862 – c.1868 placed them in the top rank for that most creative period.
One of the largest and most prolific studios of the nineteenth century, the business survived until the death of RT Bayne’s grandson Basil Richard Bayne in 1953.
Further reading:
Angels & Icons: Pre-Raphaelite Stained Glass 1850-1870 by William Waters (Seraphim Press Ltd 2012)
Nineteenth century Norfolk stained glass by Haward, Birkin (University of East Anglia / Centre of East Anglian Studies, 1984)
Victorian Stained Glass by Martin Harrison (Barrie & Jenkins Ltd, 1980)
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (1861-75) or ‘the Firm’, as it was colloquially referred to, was founded in 1861 by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, Philip Webb, Peter Paul Marshall and Charles J Faulkner. The Firm started out with no lack of confidence. As Rossetti wrote in January 1862, ‘Our stained glass…may challenge any other firm to approach it’. It was succeeded in 1875 by Morris & Co.
Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893) was a leading artist in the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who designed over a hundred windows for ‘the Firm’.
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-1898) was born in Birmingham and studied at Exeter College, Oxford where he met William Morris, with whom he developed a lifelong friendship. Together they created hundreds of stained glass windows that collectively stand as one of the finest artistic achievements of their time. The stature of this formidable artist and designer was recognised after his death when he became the first artist to be given a Memorial Service at Westminster Abbey.
Sources:
For a brief overview of the two companies see Morris & Co on Wikipedia
The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination by Fiona McCarthy, Faber & Faber, 2011.
William Morris: A Life for Our Time by Fiona MacCarthy (Faber & Faber, 1994)
Burne-Jones Special Issue, The Journal of Stained Glass, Vol. XXXV, 2011
Damozels & Deities Pre-Raphaelite Stained Glass 1870-1898 by William Waters and Alastair Carew-Cox (Seraphim Press Ltd, 2017)
Other comments
Preceding all the above windows is a fine east window of 1859 by Ward & Hughes to a design by Thomas Willement. Rather later are two windows in the north chancel by Henry Holiday for James Powell & Sons, c.1890
Further information: Norfolk Stained Glass – Sculthorpe