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Stained Glass Room
01 January 2009
This room is devoted to the display of stain glass in the gallery's collection. The key work is Harry Clarke's The Eve of St Agnes. Clarke's achievements in stained glass can be credited with reviving a medium which had suffered serious decline in Ireland. In 1923, Harold Jacob ordered a window, 'out of the usual run of domestic stained glass', depicting Keats' poem The Eve of St Agnes. Clarke responded with a work of consummate skill, encompassing every technique known to the stained glass artist. Fourteen key scenes conveying the drama and magic of the story are illustrated, topped by two decorative lunettes, with a unifying frieze below showing the dramatis personae. The other artists represented in the room as Evie Hone, Wilhelmina Geddes, Paul Bony and James Scanlon. Like Harry Clarke before him, Scanlon has striven to revive stained glass making, attracting international acclaim for his work. Study No 2 for Miró, an early piece, recalls medieval manuscripts with its intimate scale and intense, jewel-like colours but was, in fact, prompted by Miro's 'Constellations' series which demonstrated to Scanlon the great impact small-scale works could make. Contemporary in appearance, it derives in fact from traditional techniques, whereby multiple layers of coloured glass 'flashed' together are etched to remove specific areas, layer by layer. The masterfully precise craftsmanship reveals the rich palette of hues inherent in the combined layers, and panels of etched glass are sometimes superimposed, further extending the aesthetic possibilities.
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