American Neo-Gothic Stained Glass

Makers of neo-Gothic windows referred to stained glass as, "the handmaid of the architecture." The initial impetus to develop stained glass in the United States in the early nineteenth century was the early Gothic Revival among Anglican and Episcopalian congregations. The architecture called for decorative leaded windows to compliment the churches. The major American Revival architects, Richard Upjohn and Minard Lafever, designed the landmark Trinity Church and St. Anne and the Holy Trinity.

Gothic was the preferred church style in America from the late 1840s until the War Between the States; the stained glass trade gained a foothold during those years. Like the Classical, the Gothic style never disappears, but reemerges in popularity from time to time. The early twentieth century was a very rich period for American Gothic stained glass.

William Willett laid the foundation for a new twentieth century revival when he founded his studio in Philadelphia in 1898. He designed windows of painted, richly colored antique glass with his figures reflecting a full-figured Renaissance influence that was the taste of the times. His wife, Anne Lee Willet, who ran the studio for a time after his death, assisted him in his work. His son, Henry Willett, was also a Gothic revivalist, but his preference was for small, jewel-like, early French windows.

The most prominent spokesman for the Gothic Revival was Charles J. Connick. He lectured widely and wrote Adventures in Light and Color, the most respected and eloquent publication on the art form in the twentieth century. Connick expressed the opinion that stained glass's first job was to serve the architectural effect; this opinion was in sharp contrast to the painterly effect that had dominated during the Opalescent era. Connick founded his Boston-based studio in 1913.

Ralph Adams Cram, a Boston architect, was the most prominent spokesman for Gothic-style churches; many of Connick's windows went into his buildings. Joseph G. Reynolds worked with Connick before founding Reynolds, Francis and Rohnstock in 1923. Wilbur H. Burnham began work in 1904 and had his own studio by 1922. All these Boston studios designed windows to serve the architecture.

Henry Wynd Young and J. Gordon Guthrie were New York artists whose windows feature elongated, graceful figures who exhibited more painterly character. Studios all over the country were attracted to Gothic designs. Several of the more notable were Emil Frei in St. Louis, R. Tolan Wright in Cleveland and Nicola D'Ascenzo in Philadelphia.

Otto Heinigke was typical of these. A first generation American, unable to make a living at fine art painting, he went to work for John Riordan whose studio was successfully competing with Munich painted windows. Then, in 1890, he founded a studio with Owen J. Bowen. Bowen had formerly worked for both Louis Comfort Tiffany and John La Farge. A visit to the cathedrals of Europe inspired Heinigke with a love for medieval stained glass. Heinigke's Statue of Liberty window on the cover of Stained Glass, Summer 1986, is opalescent.

Cram's favorite stained glass studio was that of Charles Connick. Connick had apprenticed in the studio of the Rudy Brothers in Pittsburgh where he worked on opalescent glass. He later apologized for once admiring it. He moved to Boston to found his own studio and met Cram. Cram called him an American craftsman, "who can do a window as it should be done, with the spirit and technique that must have impelled the masters at Chartres and Paris."

Connick said he used Viollet-le-Duc's chapter on stained glass in the Dictionnaire Raisonne as the foundation of his work. Connick wrote a very popular book, Adventures in Light and Color, which he dedicated to Cram. He remained president of the Stained Glass Association of America for nine consecutive years during which time he ran it like a dictator. His second in command, Orin Skinner, was editor of Stained Glass for 15 years. Since Connick was closely associated with the architect who was the accepted authority, everyone adopted his principles without question.

The stained glass craftspeople working in the neo-Gothic style understood very little about medieval iconography, which no one (other than a few scholars) had cared about for centuries. They imitated the color palette of Chartres, principally red and blue, with touches of secondary colors. They imitated the forms, medallion windows for the aisles and large figures for the clerestories. They imitated medieval figure drawing, once called "stained glass attitudes." Since the ideal in the church was a "dim religious light" they imitated the patina of the ages with thin washes of glass paint and picked out highlights.

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