The glass of the 17th century does not count for much. Some of the best in England is the work of the Dutch van Linge family (Wadham and Balliol Colleges, Oxford). What glass painting came to in the 18th century is nowhere better to be seen than in the great west window of the ante-chapel at New College, Oxford. That is all Sir Joshua Reynolds and the best china painter of his day could do between them. The very idea of employing a china painter shows how entirely the art of the glass painter had died out.

It re-awoke in England with the Gothic revival of the 19th century; and the Gothic revival determined the direction modern glass should take. Early Victorian doings are interesting only as marking the steps of recovery (cf. the work of T. Willement in the choir of the Temple church; of Ward and Nixon, lately removed from the south transept of Westminster Abbey; of Wailes). Better things begin with the windows at Westminster inspired by A. C. Pugin, who exercised considerable influence over his contemporaries. John Powell (Hardman & Co.) was an able artist content to walk, even after that master’s death, reverently in his footsteps. Charles Winston, whose Hints on Glass Painting was the first real contribution towards the understanding of Gothic glass, and who, by the aid of the Powells (of Whitefriars) succeeded in getting something very like the texture and colour of old glass, was more learned in ancient ways of workmanship than appreciative of the art resulting from them. (He is responsible for the Munich glass in Glasgow cathedral.) So it was that, except for here and there a window entrusted by exception to W. Dyce, E. Poynter, D. G. Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown or E. Burne-Jones, glass, from the beginning of its recovery, fell into the hands of men with a strong bias towards archaeology. The architects foremost in the Gothic revival (W. Butterfield, Sir G. Scott, G. E. Street, &c.) were all inclined that way; and, as they had the placing of commissions for windows, they controlled the policy of glass painters. Designers were constrained to work in the pedantically archaeological manner prescribed by architectural fashion. Unwillingly as it may have been, they made mock-medieval windows, the interest in which died with the popular illusion about a Gothic revival. But they knew their trade; and when an artist like John Clayton (master of a whole school of later glass painters) took a window in hand (St Augustine’s, Kilburn; Truro cathedral; King’s College Chapel, Cambridge) the result was a work of art from which, tradework as it may in a sense be, we may gather what such men might have done had they been left free to follow their own artistic impulse. It is necessary to refer to this because it is generally supposed that whatever is best in recent glass is due to the romantic movement. The charms of Burne-Jones’s design and of William Morris’s colour, place the windows done by them among the triumphs of modern decorative art; but Morris was neither foremost in the reaction, nor quite such a master of the material he was working in as he showed himself in less exacting crafts. Other artists to be mentioned in connexion with glass design are: Clement Heaton, Bayne, N. H. J. Westlake and Henry Holiday, not to speak of a younger generation of able men.

Foreign work shows, as compared with English, a less just appreciation of glass, though the foremost draughtsmen of their day were enlisted for its design. In Germany, King Louis of Bavaria employed P. von Cornelius and W. von Kaulbach (Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, Glasgow); in France the Bourbons employed J. A. D. Ingres, F. V. E. Delacroix, Vernet and J. H. Flandrin (Dreux); and the execution of their designs was entrusted to the most expert painters to be procured at Munich and Sèvres; but all to little effect. They either used pot-metal glass of poor quality, or relied upon enamel—with the result that their colour lacks the qualities of glass. Where it is not heavy with paint it is thin and crude. In Belgium happier results were obtained. In the chapel of the Holy Sacrament at Brussels there is one window by J. B. Capronnier not unworthy of the fine series by B. van Orley which it supplements. At the best, however, foreign artists failed to appreciate the quality of glass; they put better draughtsmanship into their windows than English designers of the mid-Victorian era, and painted them better; but they missed the glory of translucent colour.

Modern facilities of manufacture make possible many things which were hitherto out of the question. Enamel colours are richer; their range is extended; and it may be possible, with the improved kilns and greater chemical knowledge we possess, to make them hold permanently fast. It was years ago demonstrated at Sèvres how a picture may be painted in colours upon a sheet of plate-glass measuring 4 ft. by 2½ ft. We are now no doubt in a position to produce windows painted on much larger sheets. But the results achieved, technically wonderful as they are, hardly warrant the waste of time and labour upon work so costly, so fragile, so lacking in the qualities of a picture on the one hand and of glass on the other.

In America, John la Farge, finding European material not dense enough, produced pot-metal more heavily charged with colour. This was wilfully streaked, mottled and quasi-accidentally varied; some of it was opalescent; much of it was more like agate or onyx than jewels. Other forms of American enterprise were: the making of glass in lumps, to be chipped into flakes; the ruckling it; the shaping it in a molten state, or the pulling it out of shape. It takes an artist of some reserve to make judicious use of glass like this. La Farge and L. C. Tiffany have turned it to beautiful account; but even they have put it to purposes more pictorial than it can properly fulfil. The design it calls for is a severely abstract form of ornament verging upon the barbaric.

Examples of Important Historical Stained Glass.

There are remains of the earliest known glass: in France—at Le Mans, Chartres, Châlons-sur-Marne, Angers and Poitiers cathedrals, the abbey church of St Denis and at St Remi, Reims: in England—at York minster (fragments): in Germany—at Augsburg and Strassburg cathedrals: in Austria—in the cloisters of Heiligen Kreuz.

The following is a classified list of some of the most characteristic and important windows, omitting for the most part isolated examples, and giving by preference the names of churches where there is a fair amount of glass remaining; the country in which at each period the art throve best is put first.

Early Gothic
France. England. Germany.
Chartres
Le Mans
Bourges
Reims
Auxerre		cathedrals.Canterbury
Salisbury
Lincoln		cathedrals.Church of St Kunibert, Cologne
 (Romanesque).
Cologne cathedral.
York minster.
Ste Chapelle, Paris.
Church of St Jean-aux-Bois.
Middle Gothic
England. Germany. France.
York minster.
Ely cathedral.
Wells cathedral.
Tewkesbury abbey.		Church of St Sebald, Nuremberg.Évreux cathedral.
Church of St Pierre, Chartres.
Cathedral and church of St Urbain,
 Troyes.
Church of Ste Radegonde, Poitiers.
Cathedral and church of St Ouen,
 Rouen.
Strassburg
Regensburg
Augsburg
Erfurt
Freiburg		cathedrals.
Church of Nieder Haslach.
Italy. Spain.
Church of St Francis, Assisi.
Church of Or San Michele, Florence.
Church of S. Petronio, Bologna.		 Toledo cathedral.
Late Gothic
England. France. Germany.
New College, Oxford.
Gloucester cathedral.
York, minster and other churches.
Great Malvern abbey.
Church of St Mary, Shrewsbury.
Fairford church.		Bourges
Troyes		cathedrals.Cologne
Ulm
Munich		cathedrals
Church of Notre Dame, Alençon.Church of St Lorenz, Nuremberg.
Italy. Spain.
The Duomo, Florence. Toledo cathedral.
Transition Period
The choir of the cathedral at Auch.
Renaissance
France. Netherlands. Switzerland.
St Vincent
St Patrice
St Godard		Rouen.Church of St Jacques
Church of St Martin
Cathedral		Liége.Lucerne and most of the other
  principal museums.
Church of St Foy, Conches.
Church of St Gervais, Paris.
Church of St Étienne-du-Mont, Paris.
Church of St Martin, Montmorency.
Church of Écouen.
Church of St Étienne, Beauvais.
Church of St Nizier, Troyes.
Church of Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse.
The Château de Chantilly.		Brussels cathedral.
England. Italy. Spain.
King’s College chapel, Cambridge.
Lichfield cathedral.
St George’s church, Hanover Square, London.
St Margaret’s church, Westminster.		Arezzo
Milan		cathedrals.Granada
Seville		cathedrals.
Certosa di Pavia.
Church of S. Petronio, Bologna.
Church of Sta Maria Novella, Florence.
Germany.
Freiburg cathedral.
Late Renaissance
Netherlands. France. England.
Groote Kirk, Gouda.
Choir of Brussels cathedral.
Antwerp cathedral.		Church of St Martin-ès-Vignes, Troyes.
Nave and transepts of Auch cathedral.		Wadham
Balliol
New		colleges, Oxford.
Switzerland.
Most museums.

Of late years each country has been learning so much from the others that the newest effort is very much in one direction. It seems to be agreed that the art of the window-maker begins with glazing, that the all-needful thing is beautiful glass, that painting may be reduced to a minimum, and on occasion (thanks to new developments in the making of glass) dispensed with altogether. A tendency has developed itself in the direction not merely of mosaic, but of carrying the glazier’s art farther than has been done before and rendering landscapes and even figure subjects in unpainted glass. When, however, it comes to the representation of the human face, the limitations of simple lead-glazing are at once apparent. A possible way out of the difficulty was shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1900 by M. Tournel, who, by fusing together coloured tesserae on to larger pieces of colourless glass, anticipated the discovery of the already mentioned fragment of Byzantine mosaic now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He may have seen or heard Of something of the sort. There would be no advantage in building up whole windows in this way; but for the rendering of the flesh and sundry minute details in a window for the most part heavily leaded, this fusing together of tesserae, and even of little pieces of glass cut carefully to shape, seems to supply the want of something more in keeping with severe mosaic glazing than painted flesh proves to be.