LETTERS ON PAINTED GLASS 437

if he can’t put iron. Don’t let him tell you that the old windows have been broken and mended; all the windows I have been studying are absolutely perfect and uninjured, not a pane lost. Now pray take care to have dark whites, very dark.

2

CHARTRES, 22nd May.

DEAR OLDFIELD,-I have been all day in the cathedral, doing nothing. The vivid impression it had left upon me was far beneath the truth, and the little attention I have lately given to the subject has so far opened my eyes to the value of these windows that I could do nothing for two hours together but walk round and round again, wondering. Ward ought to come here before he is an hour older; for all the cathedrals of Europe could scarcely, together, furnish such a mass of colour as I have been dazzling myself with to-day.¹

I was delighted to find, in the first place, that two of the best windows here were grounded with the very chequer which you proposed to have for our central light, and that I was wrong in supposing that the gold should be in the centre of the squares. I hope, therefore, that no alteration has been made, and that the central light will be this ground with five circular subjects; we can have nothing better, provided Ward keeps his blue pure and deep in the circles, and opposes it with pale yellows and rich purply browns in the figures.

All the windows here have subjects of the richest and fullest kind, the ground of chequer appearing only in small spaces. Had it been in our power-either pecuniarily or in consistence with our plan of subject-to have done so, I should have wished to have copied one of them, bit by bit, in our central light, without alteration; but as they, without exception, represent quaint Romish legends, unsuited either to the comprehension or faith of a Camberwell congregation, I think it needless to send you any of the designs; neither have I found anything to assist me in supplying the vacancies of the upper parts, for all the subjects here are so quaint and grotesque that they do not admit of being separated from the blaze of colour with which they are surrounded, or of being brought to close quarters. They are indeed, to my mind, the perfection of glass-painting; but still, they will scarcely do for the nineteenth century. Take, for instance, the “Temptation on the Pinnacle,” which, as you are going to have a “Temptation,” I sketched for Mr. Ward’s edification [reference to an enclosed sketch, which is not available]. I’m afraid Ward will think he can do better. I am sure he can’t; but I think the congregation might object to a devil with so neat a pair of legs, and so I suppose he had better give us his own design. This is one of three-in the last, the devil is going off in a passion, with his arms a-kimbo-a figure of most admirable expression and life.

¹ [For the windows of Chartres-especially the west window, “upon which ‘gouts’ of blood appear to have been dropped”-see below, “Lectures on Colour,” § 37, p. 504. Other references to the windows occur in Two Paths, § 82; and Lectures on Landscape (the west window again), § 74.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]