St Stephen, St Catherine and St Alban, by Gerald Horsley (1862-1917), at All Saints, Leek. This is one of a pair of windows on the south wall of the Lady Chapel, which Horsley painted with design of St Francis preaching to the birds. It is a very attractive setting, and the three saints make a good contribution: here are the learned monk/Pope St Gregory, St Catherine standing beside the great spiked wheel on which she was condemned to die (but which went to pieces at her touch) and the first English martyr, St Alban, with the hefty sword that was the instrument of his martyrdom. Notice the architectural background, not fanciful but entirely realistic.
Horsley was both an architect and an artist: he was the son of the painter John Callcott Horsley, and had been articled to the architect of All Saints, Richard Norman Shaw, before becoming his assistant. He would later become president of the Architectural Association (1911-12, 1912-13). But he also exhibited drawings of monuments and so on at the Royal Academy, and illustrated E. S. Prior's A History of Gothic Art in England (1900) with many beautiful line-drawings.
One of his most important contributions to the Arts and Crafts movement of the period, in which he was very closely involved, was his essay, "The Unity of Art" in T. G. Jackson's and Shaw's Architecture, A Profession or an Art of 1892 (see Whyte 82).
Photograph by Michael Critchlow. Text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use the image 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 in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Related Material
Sources
"The Late Mr Gerald Horsely." Architectural Review. Vol. 42 (1912): 44. Google Books (very partial view). Web. 17 November 2015.
Prior, E. S. A History of Gothic Art in England. London: George Bell, 1900. Internet Archive. Contributed by the University of California Libraries. Web. 17 November 2015.
Whyte, William. Oxford Jackson: Architecture, Education, Status, and Style, 1835-1924. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Created 15 November 2015