Photographs by John Salmon, Art Journal images and text downloaded by George P. Landow, and formatting by Landow and 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 in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on the images to enlarge them.
Left to right: (a) Elijah taken up to heaven. (b) Dove of Peace; Lion of Judah and The Translation of Enoch.
Three apse windows in the (Former) Church of the Ark of the Covenant, which was designed by the architectural firm Joseph Morris & Sons as the Agapemonite church in Upper Clapton (Stamford Hill), London N16 6SS. The windows were designed by Walter Crane and manufactured by J. S. Sparrow. They were installed in 1896.
Art Journal illustration of the two outer windows, and commentary
Design of the side windows in the apse.
“The subjects in the two side windows of the apse, Elijah taken up to Heaven, and the Translation of Enoch, are of a type more familiar in glass; but Mr. Crane, as far as he was allowed, has treated them quite in his own manner. Elijah ascends in a chariot of yellow flame, drawn by white horses with flaming opalescent wings. The prophet is robed in white; his mantle descends literally upon Elisha, who wraps it devoutly about him. In the companion window, Enoch is carried up to Heaven in a swirl of vaporous colour. The three onlookers are an almost inevitable concession to the necessities of composition. In the design as at first conceived, the place of the Angels above was occupied by a flight of doves, which helped very much the action of Ascension. But Ascension was not thought to be enough; it was held necessary to show whither. So the artist was called upon to indicate the more conventional peep into Heaven, with welcoming angels seen through the clouds, one of whom actually bears up the holy man.
What a pity it is that considerations of Art and sentiment should sometimes pull in opposite directions! Mr. Crane, however, has had at Stamford Hill wider scope and greater license than would have been allowed to him in an Anglican Church. And there is another point to bear in mind: fanciful as may appear to us the imagery an artist is called upon to set forth in church decoration, to those by whom, and for whom, the building is raised, it is of truest and deepest import: Art is not all in all. ” (The Art Journal, p. 200).
Other windows by Crane in this church
- The Rising Sun of Righteousness (west window)
- Sin, Shame, Disease, and Death (flanking west windows)
- Nave windows, and screen over west door
Bibliography
Day, Lewis F. “The Windows of a New Church.” The Art Journal, N.S. Vol. 58. London: J. S. Virtue, 1896. Internet Archive. Web. 12 February 2012.
Last modified 13 October 2016