St Anne, Jesus and the Virgin Mary, by Edward Burne-Jones Tracery lights

Left: Whole window, showing: St Anne, teaching the young Virgin Mary to read; Jesus displaying his wounds; and the Virgin Mary reading with an angel (probably an Annunciation scene). Right: Close-up of tracery lights.

Designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), and made by the Morris Company, this window is the fourth in the north aisle of St James' Church, Weybridge, Surrey. It commemorates Frances James, who died in 1885, and (according to the script under the window) was erected by her husband as a memorial. He died later the same year. Photographs, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on the images to enlarge them.]

St Anne, close-up Jesus displaying his wounds The Virgin Mary with an angel

Close-ups of each panel.

This window is instantly recognisable among the others in the church — it is the only Burne-Jones/Morris one there. With flowers amid scrolling and spreading foliage in the tracery lights, brief texts over the two side panels reading "Be not faithless / but believing" (John 20, 27), and quiet greenish-toned flower patterns as background and carried into the panels below, it would have been executed during their last stylistic phase, that is, from the 1880-90s, when, it seems, "Morris & Co.'s stained glass had reached its apogee, and ... this would therefore be the idiom employed for all subsequent work in the twentieth century" (Cormack 3).

Lower panels

The background pattern in a shady corner. It is not easily seen with sunlight shining through it.

Sources

Cormack, Peter. An Exhibition of Morris & Co.'s Stained Glass for the Chapel of Cheadle Royal Hospital. London: Haslam & Whiteway, 2008. (Exhibition Catalogue.) Web. 25 June 2014.

Eberhard, Robert. "Stained Glass Windows at St James." Church Stained Glass Windows. Web. 24 June 2014.

"St James' Parish Church, Weybridge, Surrey." Pamphlet available in the parish office.


Last modified 25 June 2014