SOLDWatercolour, gouache and black ink over charcoal on buff coloured paper,
63 x 16 1/2 in. (160 x 42 cm.)
Tags: Frank Brangwyn charcoal gouache ink watercolour design Brangwyn Drawings from the collection of Father Jerome Esser
Provenance: Count William de Belleroche
Literature:Herbert Furst, The Decorative Art of Frank Brangwyn, London 1924, Ch. XXV, pp. 198-9, reproduced; Phillip Macer-Wright, Brangwyn: A study of Genius at Close Quarters, London, 1940, p. 253; Rodney Brangwyn, Brangwyn, London, 1978, pp. 206-7, and p.153 (on the frame); Libby Horner, ‘Pea Pods, Banana Skins and Brangwyn’, Ecclesiology Today, Issue 25, April 2001, pp. 23-6; Libby Horner, Frank Brangwyn: Stained Glass – A catalogue raisonné, 2010, no. G2237, reproduced, p 42.Horner, Frank Brangwyn:Stained Glass. A Catalogue raisonne, 2011, p 42; Frank Brangwyn, Drawings from the Collection of Father Jerome Esser, Liss Fine Art 2015, cat. 39, page 43
In original Dutch ripple moulding frame designed by the artist and made by Alfred Stiles of Hammersmith.
One
of Brangwyn’s most important stained-glass commissions, and probably
his most successful, this design for a stained-glass window was
commissioned by Lady Webley-Parry-Pryse in memory of her mother, Mrs
Webley-Parry, who had died on 2 September 1917. Mrs Webley-Parry had
given very generously of her time and money in parish affairs. The
three-light window is situated in the north aisle of the Church of St.
Mary the Virgin, Bucklebury, and shows a landscape nativity scene with
Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus in the centre, shepherds to the right
and left. Behind the figures a wattle fence creates a horizontal divide
over which the spectators gaze and beyond this a blue-grey landscape
with sheep, cattle and Bethlehem in the distance. The stable roof
appears at the top, the vertical stable supports dividing the outer
lights. The design was executed in glass by James Sylvester Sparrow.
In
1924 the art historian and critic, Herbert Furst, considered the
nativity window ‘perfect’, the design fitting easily into the window
shape, the composition simple, ‘the drawing full of dramatic power and
characterization, and the beautiful colour scheme helps the
definition.’ He also appreciated the row of spectators gazing over the
fence, which he described as ‘an excellent and unusual effect,
dramatically, tectonically and colouristically’. Furst continued that it
was ‘futile to attempt a description; the window, like a musical
composition, must be realised by direct contact with the senses. It is
undoubtedly one of the finest things Brangwyn has done…’
In the
early decades of the 1900s Brangwyn was one of the most revered artists
in the world, his work being avidly commissioned or collected by many of
the greatest public and private collections in Europe, the British
Empire, Japan and the United States. He was indeed the first British
artist to achieve world-wide recognition in his lifetime, and the
Dictionary of National Biography was able to record that ‘His work is
represented in virtually every major art gallery and print room in the
world.’ Brangwyn was an extremely versatile artist and designer. In
addition to his canvasses, he was also in great demand as a painter of
murals for very significant public buildings in many countries,
including his famous series for the Rockefeller Center in New York. He
was, in fact, a complete polymath, the quintessential artist craftsman.
Apart from his paintings and murals, he designed stained glass, carpets,
jewellery, metalwork, pottery, posters and furniture. He was elected
Royal Academician in 1919 (although he had almost nothing to do with the
Academy’s affairs) and was knighted in 1941. An important exhibition of
his art was opened in 1924 by the Prime Minister, the first occasion
this had ever happened for an art show. In 1952, Brangwyn was honoured
with the first retrospective at the Royal Academy of a living artist’s
work. He held the presidency of numerous artistic societies and his work
was recognised by countless awards and honours bestowed by many nations
as well as Britain. Yet, until a major retrospective of his work in
various locations in Britain and abroad in 2006, his work had long since
ceased to be exhibited widely in Britain (although it was still abroad)
and his name was largely unknown. Brangwyn had received no academic
training and did not philosophise about art, nor was he a
self-publicist. Somewhat a loner, working independently of other
artists, he followed his own course and was not connected with any
particular school or group. The generally dismissive response of most
(but not all) gallery curators and art-schools in Britain to Brangwyn
indicated either a lack of knowledge of the artist or an unwillingness
to confront their self-manufactured difficulties perceived to arise from
the inability neatly to allocate Brangwyn to one or another artistic
school or to find some convenient category in which to slot his oeuvre.
It is inconceivable that such a state of affairs could have arisen, or
subsisted, had not the artistically-myopic House of Lords in 1930
rejected Brangwyn’s magnificent Empire Panels created for the Royal
Gallery as a commemoration of the First World War, a decision that must
remain one of the most controversial and unpopular in the history of
British art. The enthusiastic research of art historian Dr Elizabeth
Horner throughout the 1990s and beyond on the life and work of Brangwyn
has contributed to a much greater appreciation of Brangwyn’s work across
many media, and to renewed interest in his significant achievements as
an artist. The result has been that Brangwyn’s work is now more widely
exhibited in important venues and frequently appears in the major
salerooms.
The present whereabouts of the designs for the central and left-hand light s of the Nativity window is unknown
We are grateful to Dr David Wilson FSA for the above note.
We are grateful to Dr. Libby Horner for assistance. This design will appear as G2237 in her forthcoming catalogue raisonne.
