Stained Glass Work Part 12

"HARMONY IN COLOUR DEPENDS NOT ONLY UPON THE ARRANGING OF RIGHT COLOURS TOGETHER, BUT THE ARRANGING OF THE RIGHT QUANt.i.tIES AND THE RIGHT DEGREES OF THEM TOGETHER."

To which may be added another, _a 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 quant.i.ty, 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 a.s.sistant--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 students.h.i.+p.

And truly 'tis no great hards.h.i.+p 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 gra.s.s, 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-gla.s.s of this balmy air, which shuts us in, safe from the pitch-dark s.p.a.ces 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 b.u.t.terflies 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-gla.s.s?

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 Hertfords.h.i.+re:"[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-gla.s.s, 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 gra.s.s; 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; b.u.t.terflies, birds, and sh.e.l.ls; the pebbles of the sh.o.r.e; 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-gla.s.s; 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-gla.s.s (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 b.u.t.terflies, chiefly among the _Pierinf_, with broad s.p.a.ces 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 quant.i.ty. What I have spoken of looks horrible because the yellow is of a bra.s.sy tone, as stain so often is, especially on green-white gla.s.ses, 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 G.o.d. 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 _quant.i.ty_, 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 _quant.i.ties_: 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 "quant.i.ty." 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 gla.s.s when all is chosen and placed together--matt in one place, film in another, chequering, cross-hatching, clothing the raw gla.s.s with texture and bringing out its nature and its life.

Do not be afraid; for the things that yet remain to do are numberless.

Do you like the look of deep vivid vermilion-red, upon dark cold green?

Look at the hip-loaded rose-briar burning in the last rays of a red October sunset! You get physical pleasure from the sight; the eye seems to vibrate to the harmony as the ear enjoys a chord struck upon the strings. Therefore do not fear. But mind, it must be in nature's actual colour, not merely "green" and "red": for I once saw the head of a celebrated tragic actress painted by a Dutch artist who, to make it as deathly as he could, had placed the ashen face upon a background of emerald-green with spots of actual red sealing-wax. The eye was so affected that the colours swung to and fro, producing in a short time a nausea like sea-sickness. That is not pleasure.

The training of the colour-sense, like all else, should be gradual; springing as it were from small seed. Be reticent, try small things first. You are not likely to be asked to do a great window all at once, even if you have the misfortune to be an independent artist approaching this new art without a gradual training under the service of others. Try some simple scheme from the things of Nature. Hyacinths look well with their leaves: therefore _that_ green and _that_ blue, with the white of April clouds and the black of the tree-stems in the wood are colours that can be used together.

You must be prepared to find almost a sort of penalty in this habit of looking at everything with the eye of a stained-gla.s.s artist. One seems after a time to see natural objects with numbers attached to them corresponding with the numbers of one's gla.s.ses in the racks: b.u.t.terflies flying about labelled "No. 50, deep," or "75_a_, pale," or a bit of "123, special streaky" in the sunset. But if one does not obtrude this so as to bore one's friends, the little personal discomfort, if it exists, is a very small price to pay for the delight of living in this glorious fairyland of colour.

Do not think it beneath your dignity or as if you were s.h.i.+rking some vital artistic obligation, to take hints from these natural objects, or from ancient or modern gla.s.s, in a perfectly frank and simple manner; nay, even to match your whole colour scheme, tint for tint, by them if it seems well to you. You may get help anywhere and from anything, and as much as you like; it will only be so much more chance for you; so much richer a store to choose from, so much stronger resource to guide to good end; for after all, with all the helps you can get, much lies in the doing. Do what you like then--as a child: but be sure you _do_ like it: and if the window wants a bit of any particular tint, put it there, meaning or no meaning. If there is no robe or other feature to excuse and account for it in the spot which seems to crave for it,--put the colour in, anywhere and anyhow--in the background if need be--a sudden orange or ruby "quarry" or bit of a quarry, as if the thing were done in purest waywardness. "You would like a bit there if there were an excuse for it?" Then there _is_ an excuse--the best of all--that the eye demands it. Do it fearlessly.

But to work in this way (it hardly need be said) you must watch and work at your gla.s.s yourself; for these hints come late on in the work, when colour, light and shade, and design are all fusing together into a harmony. You can no more forecast these final accidents, which are the flower and crown and finish of the whole, than you could forecast the lost "Chord";--

"Which came from the soul of the organ, And entered into mine."

It "comes from the soul" of the window.

We all know the feeling--the climaxes, exceptions, surprises, suspensions, in which harmony delights; the change from the last bar of the overture to the first of the opening recitative in the "Messiah,"

the chord upon which the victor is crowned in "The Meistersingers," the 59th and 60th bars in Handel's "Every Valley." (I hope some of us are "old-fas.h.i.+oned" enough to be unashamed of still believing in Handel!)

Or if it may be said that these are hardly examples of the kind of accidental things I have spoken of, being rather, indeed, the deliberately arranged climax to which the whole construction has been leading, I would instance the 12th (complete) bar in the overture to "Tannhduser," the 20th and 22nd bar in Chopin's Funeral March, the change from the minor to major in Schubert's Romance from "Rosamunde,"

and the 24th bar in his Serenade (_Standchen_), the 13th and following bars of the Crescendo in the Largo Appa.s.sionato of Beethoven's Op. 2. Or if you wish to have an example where _all_ is exception, like one of the south nave windows in York Minster, the opening of the "Sonata Appa.s.sionata," Op. 57.

Now how can you forecast such things as these!

Let me draw another instance from actual practice. I was once painting a figure of a bishop in what I meant to be a dark green robe, the kind of black, and yet vivid, green of the summer leaf.a.ge of the oak; for it was St. Boniface who cut down the heathen oak of Frisia. But the orphreys of his cope were to be embroidered in gold upon this green, and therefore the pattern had first to be added out in white upon a blue-flashed gla.s.s, which yellow stain over all would afterwards turn into green and gold. And when all was prepared and the staining should have followed, my head man sent for me to come to the shop, and there hung the figure with its dark green robe with orphreys of _deep blue_ and _silver_.

"I thought you'd like to look at it before we stained it," said he.

"STAIN IT!" I said. "I wouldn't touch it; not for sixpence three-farthings!"

There was a sigh of relief all round the shop, and the reply was, "Well, so we all thought!"

Just so; therefore the figure remained, and so was erected in its place.

Now suppose I had had men who did what they were told, instead of being encouraged to think and feel and suggest?

A serious word to you about this question of staining. It is a resource very easily open to abuse--to excess. Be careful of the danger, and never stain without first trying the effect on the back of the easel-plate with pure gamboge, and if you wish for a very clear orange-stain, mix with the gamboge a little ordinary red ink. It is too much the custom to "pick out" every bit of silver "canopy" work with dottings and stripings of yellow. A _little_ sometimes warms up pleasantly what would be too cold--and the old men used it with effect: but the modern tendency, as is the case in all things merely imitative, is to overdo it. For the old men used it very differently from those who copy them in the way I am speaking of, and, to begin with, used it chiefly on _pure white gla.s.s_. Much modern canopy work is done on greenish-white, upon which the stain immediately becomes that greenish-yellow that I have called "bra.s.sy." A little of this can be borne, when side by side with it is placed stain upon pure white. The reader will easily find, if he looks for them, plenty of examples in old gla.s.s, where the stain upon the white gla.s.s has taken even a _rosy_ tinge exactly like that of a yellow crocus seen through its white sheath. It is perhaps owing partly to patina on the old gla.s.s, which "sc.u.mbles" it; but I have myself sometimes succeeded in getting the same effect by using yellow-stain on pure white gla.s.s. A whole window, where the highest light is a greenish white, is to me very unpleasant, and when in addition yellow-stain is used, unbearable. This became a fas.h.i.+on in stained-gla.s.s when red-lead-coloured pigments, started by Barff's formula, came into general use. They could not be used on pure white gla.s.s, and therefore pure white gla.s.s was discarded and greenish-white used instead. I can only say that if the practice of stained-gla.s.s were presented to me with this condition--of abstaining from the use of pure white--I would try to learn some useful trade.

There is another question of ideals in the treatment of colour in stained-gla.s.s about which a word must be said.

Those who are enthusiastic about the material of stained-gla.s.s and its improvement are apt to condemn the degree of heaviness with which windows are ordinarily painted, and this to some extent is a just criticism. But I cannot go the length of thinking that all matt-painting should be avoided, and outline only used; or that stained-gla.s.s material can, except under very unusual conditions and in exceptional situations, be independent of this resource. As to the slab-gla.s.ses--"Early-English," "Norman," or "stamped-circles"--which are chiefly affected by this question, the texture and surface upon which their special character depends is sometimes a very useful resource in work seen against, or partly against, background of trees or buildings; while against an entirely "borrowed" light perhaps, sometimes, it can almost dispense with any painting. The grey shadows that come from the background play about in the gla.s.s and modify its tones, doing the work of painting, and doing it much more beautifully. But this advantage cannot always be had, for it vanishes against clear sky. It is all, therefore, a question of situation and of aspect, and I believe the right rule to be to do in all cases what seems best for every individual bit of gla.s.s--that each piece should be "cared for" on its merits and "nursed," so to speak, and its qualities brought out and its beauty heightened by any and every means, just as if it were a jewel to be cut (or left uncut) or foiled (or left unfoiled)--as Benvenuto Cellini would treat, as he tells you he _did_ treat, precious stones. There is a fas.h.i.+on now of thinking that gems should be uncut. Well, gems are hardly a fair comparison in discussing stained-gla.s.s; for in gla.s.s what we aim at is the effect of a composition and combination of a mult.i.tude of things, while gems are individual things, for the most part, to be looked at separately. But I would not lay down a rule even about gems.

Certainly the universal, awkward, faceting of all precious stones--which is a relic of the mid-Victorian period--is a vulgarity that one is glad to be rid of; but if one _wants_ for any reason the special sparkle, here or there, which comes from it, why not use it? I would use it in _stained-gla.s.s_--have done so. If I have got my window already brilliant and the whites pure white, and still want, over and above all this, my "Star of the Nativity," let us say, to sparkle out with a light that cannot be its own, shall I not use a faceted "jewel" of gla.s.s, forty feet from the eye, where none can see what it is but only what it does, just because it would be a gross vulgarity to use it where it would pretend to be a diamond?

The safe guide (as far as there can be a _guide_ where I have maintained that there should not be a _rule_) is, surely, to generally get the depth of colour that you want by the gla.s.s itself, _if you can_, and therefore with that aim to deal with rich, full-coloured gla.s.s and to promote its manufacture. But this being once done and the resource carried to its full limit, there is no reason why you should deny yourself the further resource of touching it with pigment to any extent that may seem fit to you as an artist, and necessary to get the effect of colour and texture that you are aiming at, in the thing seen as a whole. As to the exaggeration of making accidental streaks in the gla.s.s do duty for folds of drapery, and manufacturing gla.s.s (as has been done) to meet this purpose, I hold the thing to be a gross degradation and an entire misconception of the relation of materials to art. You may also lay this to mind, as a thing worthy of consideration, that all old gla.s.s was painted, and that no school of stained-gla.s.s has ever existed which made a principle of refusing this aid. I would never argue from this that such cannot exist, but it is a thing to be thought on.

Throw your net, then, into every sea, and catch what you can. Learn what purple is, in the north ambulatory at York; what green is, in the east window of the same, in the ante-chapel of New College, Oxford, and in the "Adam and Eve" window in the north aisle at Fairford; what blue and red are, in the glorious east window of the nave at Gloucester, and in the glow and gloom of Chartres and Canterbury and King's College, Cambridge. And when you have got all these things in your mind, and gathered lavishly in the field of Nature also, face your problem with a heart heated through with the memory of them all, and with a will braced as to a great and arduous task, but one of rich reward. For remember this (and so let us draw to an end), that in any large window the s.p.a.ces are so great and the problems so numerous that a _few_ colours and groupings of colour, however well chosen, will not suffice. Set out the main scheme of colours first: those that shall lead and preponderate and convey your meaning to the mind and your intended impression to the eye.

But if you stop here, the effect will be hard and coa.r.s.e and cold-hearted in its harmonies, a lot of banging notes like a band all bra.s.s, not out of tune perhaps, but craving for the infinite embroidery of the strings and wood.

When, therefore, the main relations of colour have been all set out and decided for your window, turn your attention to _small_ differences, to harmonies _round_ the harmonies. Make each note into a chord, each tint into a group of tints, not only the strong and bold, but also the subtle and tender; do not miss the value of small modifications of tint that soften brilliance into glow. Study how Nature does it on the petals of the pansy or sweet-pea. You think a pansy is purple, and there an end?

but cut out the pale yellow band, the orange central spot, the faint lilacs and whites in between, and where is your pansy gone?

And here I must now leave it to you. But one last little hint, and do not smile at its simplicity.

For the problem, after all, when you have gathered all the hints you can from nature or the past, and collected your resources from however varied fields, resolves itself at last into one question--"_How shall I do it in gla.s.s?_" And the practical solving of this problem is in the handling of the actual bits of coloured gla.s.s which are the tools of your craft. And for manipulating these I have found nothing so good as that old-fas.h.i.+oned toy--still my own delight when a sick-bed enforces idleness--the kaleidoscope. A sixpenny one, pulled to pieces, will give you the knowledge of how to make it; and you will find a "Bath-Oliver"

biscuit-tin, or a large-sized millboard "postal-roll" will make an excellent instrument. But the former is best, because you also then have the lid and the end. If you cut away all the end of the lid except a rim of one-eighth of an inch, and insert in its place with cement a piece of ground-gla.s.s, and then, inside this, have another lid of clear gla.s.s cemented on to a rim of wood or millboard, you can, in the s.p.a.ce between the two, place chips of the gla.s.ses you think of using; and, replacing the whole on the instrument, a few minutes of turning with the hand will give you, not hundreds, but thousand of changes, both of the arrangement, and, what is far more important, of the _proportions_ of the various colours. You can thus in a few moments watch them pa.s.s through an almost infinite succession of changes in their relation to each other, and form your judgment on those changes, choosing finally that which seems best. And I really think that the fact of these combinations being presented to us, as they are by the action of the instrument, arranged in ordered shapes, is a help to the judgment in deciding on the harmonies of colour. It is natural that it should be so.

"Order is Heaven's first law." And it is right that we should rejoice in things ordered and arranged, as the savage in his string of beads, and reasonable that we should find it easier to judge them in order rather than confused.

Each in his place. How good a thing it is! how much to be desired! how well if we ourselves could be so, and know of the pattern that we make!