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Much of what is written about Trinity Church and specifically about its windows expresses puzzlement over the selection of, if not downright antipathy for, the English and French windows which fill twenty-nine of the thirty-three openings in the church. Henry-Russell Hitchcock berates them as the "worst French stained glass windows" and decries the "smeary Burne-Jones colour." Norton, et al., in describing La Farge's windows, implies that the Building Committee should have had all the windows executed by La Farge, saying:
"The order of installation of the windows in Trinity Church by the Building Committee with the constant aid of [Rev. Phillips] Brooks suggests that they, like La Farge, learned from their efforts. The fact that all but one of the large windows installed in the church after 1880 were executed by La Farge ... is certainly testimony to the regard in which his work was held.
Our late twentieth-century perspective has placed La Farge and his developments in window design far above English and French artists of the same period. While this point of view is arguable from an art historical standpoint, in terms of the care and restoration of the windows of Trinity Church it is important to view the windows in the context of their time period and with sensitivity towards the aesthetic values of that period. It is critical as well to understand what motivated the selection of certain artists and iconography; influences range from personal preferences to market availability.
The construction of Trinity Church in early 1877, at which time the Building Committee, or at least Rev. Brooks, had begun the search for appropriate memorial stained glass windows. Only one window, "The Baptism," Window 11, by the London firm of
Clayton & Bell was installed at the time of consecration in February, 1877, but Brooks commissioned two more chancel windows immediately, and the remaining four chancel windows by the summer of the same year. The eighth Clayton & Bell window, "David Removing the Ark," Window 2, was also commissioned around this time and installed by 1878. Similarly, the windows by Burlison and Grylls of London beneath the North Transept balcony (Windows 27-30) and in the Robing Room (Window 19), Daniel Cottier & Co. of London and New York beneath the South Transept balcony (Windows 22-25),
Henry Holiday of London in the west wall of the Nave, and A. Oudinot of Paris in the South Transept balcony were all commissioned in 1877-78. The two William Morris-Edward Burne-Jones windows (Window 14 in the North Transept and Window 26, "David's Charge to Solomon" in the Baptistry) were commissioned and installed in 1880 and 1882, and the third Holiday window, "The Transfiguration," Window 4, in 1885.
In total, twenty of the thirty-three windows were commissioned within a year of the church's completion, 1878, and another three were completed by 1885, filling seventy percent of the window openings.
John La Farge received five window commissions from the Building Committee. The first, "Christ Blessing" or
"Christ in Majesty" (Window 1), was installed in 1883; the second, "IEPOSOLYMA" or "The New Jerusalem" (Window 16), in 1884; the third,
"Purity," in the Parish House in 1885; the fourth,
"Presentation of Mary at the Temple" (Window 3), in 1888; and the last,
"The Resurrection" (Window 15), fourteen years later, in 1902.
The remaining windows were all installed in the twentieth century, in the 1920s: "St. Luke the Evangelist" (Window 5), by Heaton, Butler & Bayne of London, around 1920; and "Apostles," "Evangelists," and the "Solomon" window (Windows 20, 21, 31, 32, and 33) by Margaret Redmond of Boston in 1927.
It might be tempting to assume, as Norton, et al., imply, that since the mural decoration of the church had been entrusted to La Farge in 1876, had the Building Committee known better they would have commissioned La Farge to provide more windows than just the four in the church. Even the curmudgeonly Hitchcock admits that "the La Farge windows in the facade are magnificent in colour and scale .... They imitate no earlier glass, and yet rival the best of the past in their quality of low burning intensity ... the feat of modelling plausibly in painted glass is surprisingly successful." Although he also calls the design "derivative," the impression the reader is left with is that the Building Committee erred in their selection of English and French artists. Did they?
The simple answer is "No," in fact, they did not err: in 1877 and 1878, they had no other choices. While it is true that by this time, La Farge had achieved an excellent reputation as an artist, he was just beginning to branch out into the decorative arts. Trinity was his first major mural commission, and although he had begun experimenting with stained glass in 1876, by 1878, he considered all his efforts in the medium failures. His window clients (namely, Harvard University) were inclined to agree. They had commissioned a window from him ("The Chevalier Bayard") which was unsuccessful artistically (from La Farge's point of view) and financially, costing twice as much as the Class wished. They ended up by giving that commission and the next to Henry Holiday. It wasn't until 1880 that La Farge felt confident with the medium, having developed opalescent glass in 1879, secured its production, and located craftspeople capable of interpreting his designs as he envisioned them. In 1877 and 1878, it was impossible to foresee that he would develop a new glass and revolutionize the design of stained glass windows; from the Building Committee's point of view, La Farge was not an option to design windows until 1880.
So why didn't the Building Committee commission a window from La Farge until 1883? Probably because La Farge was too busy with the decoration of the Vanderbilt Houses in New York to accept such a major commission. Instead, in the first years of the decade of the 1880s, the Building Committee turned to
Morris & Company, a firm La Farge had visited in 1873. Ironically, it was as a result of this visit, during which La Farge decided that Burne-Jones and the English artists had "reached the end of their rope" artistically, that convinced him to begin to explore the medium.
Clayton & Bell, Burlison & Grylls, Henry Holiday, and the Morris Company were some of the best stained glass designers in England. It is logical at this time that an American Episcopal church would turn to English artists, trained to satisfy the needs of the Anglican church. In so doing, Trinity's Building Committee and donors, directed by Brooks, purchased the finest stained glass windows then available.
Of all the foreign windows in Trinity Church,
the Oudinot windows are perhaps the most unusual, particularly in a New England Episcopal church. French stained glass artists were typically considered appropriate for Catholic churches, not Episcopalian. Typically, American commissions from French studios are found south and west of Philadelphia. Norton, et al., assume that the selection of the Parisian firm was based on the fact that the patrons, the Ritchie family, lived in Paris at the time. This is a reasonable assumption.
In sum, although national pride and modern aesthetic judgements might lead us to prefer the La Farge windows today, in determining an appropriate course of restoration, we do not recommend that this partiality inform the decision-making process. Contextually speaking, from a late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century point of view, all of the windows of Trinity Church are artistically significant. All represent the best work of their type, and all deserve the same high level of care and restoration.
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Julie L. Sloan, LLC
