The Tristram and Isoude stained glass panels are a series of 13 small stained-glass windows made in 1862 by Morris, Marshall, Faulker & Co. for Harden Grange, the house of textile merchant Walter Dunlop, near Bingley in Yorkshire, England. Depicting the legend of Tristan and Iseult, they were designed by six of the leading Pre-Raphaelite artists of the day, to an overall design by William Morris. They were acquired in 1917 by Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, which is now part of Bradford Museums & Galleries. They can be seen on display at Cliffe Castle, Keighley.
The 13 small [1] stained-glass panels depict scenes from the story of Sir Tristram and la Belle Isoude as told in Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur . [2] [3] [4] They were commissioned by Walter Dunlop, a Bradford textile merchant, for a new music room to be built at Harden Grange, his house near Bingley, Yorkshire, and were designed and executed in 1862 by Morris, Marshall, Faulker & Co., the decorative arts firm established the year before by the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Morris in partnership with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, Philip Webb, Charles Faulkner and Peter Paul Marshall. [2] [3] [4] [5]
This was the firm's first commission for windows for a private residence, or with a non-ecclesiastical subject, and Morris provided Dunlop with a hand-written programme for the proposed work headed "Short abstract of the Romance of Tristram", with marginal annotations suggesting the pictorial possibilities of the story. [2] [3] [4]
To design the cartoons or preparatory drawings for the individual panels, Morris turned to four of the artists who had worked with him in 1857 on another project based on the Arthurian legend as retold by Malory, the Oxford Union murals—Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Val Prinsep and Arthur Hughes—plus his partner Ford Madox Brown. [3] [6] Morris himself designed four of the 13 panels and maintained the cohesiveness of the series through his overall design, matching text blocks, placement of the lead lines, and selection of colours, including deep ruby-reds and olive greens. [3] [6]
The subjects of the 13 panels and their designers are: [4] [7]
The Tristram and Isoude windows were acquired by the Bradford Art Gallery in 1917, along with documentation relating to the subject matter of the panels and their installation, including the "Short abstract". [3] [4] They can be seen on display at Cliffe Castle, Keighley.
Ford Madox Brown was a British painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Arguably, his most notable painting was Work (1852–1865). Brown spent the latter years of his life painting the twelve works known as The Manchester Murals, depicting Mancunian history, for Manchester Town Hall.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" partly modelled on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti inspired the next generation of artists and writers, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in particular. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, was an English painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter.
Henry Holiday was an English Victorian painter of historical genre and landscapes, also a stained-glass designer, illustrator, and sculptor. He was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, many of whom he knew.
Events from the year 1865 in art.
Wightwick Manor is a Victorian house in Wightwick Bank, a suburb of Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England. It was commissioned in 1887 from the architect Edward Ould by Theodore Mander of Mander Brothers, a Wolverhampton paint and varnish manufacturer. It stands adjacent to the Old Manor, a late sixteenth or early seventeenth-century building that was the original residence on the site.
Red House is a significant Arts and Crafts building located in Bexleyheath, south-east London, England. Co-designed in 1859 by the architect Philip Webb and the designer William Morris, it was created to serve as a family home for Morris. Construction was completed in 1860.
Jane Morris was an English embroiderer in the Arts and Crafts movement and an artists' model who embodied the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty. She was a model and muse to her husband William Morris and to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her sister was the embroiderer and teacher Elizabeth Burden.
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (1861–1875) was a furnishings and decorative arts manufacturer and retailer founded by the artist and designer William Morris with friends from the Pre-Raphaelites. With its successor Morris & Co. (1875–1940) the firm's medieval-inspired aesthetic and respect for hand-craftsmanship and traditional textile arts had a profound influence on the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century.
Cartwright Hall is the civic art gallery in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, situated about a mile from the city centre in the Manningham district. It was built on the former site of Manningham Hall using a gift of £40,000 donated by Samuel Lister and it is named after Edmund Cartwright. The gallery which opened in 1904 initially had a display of artworks loaned from other galleries and private collections until it was able to purchase a permanent collection of Victorian and Edwardian works using money raised by the 1904 Bradford Exhibition.
Louis Davis was an English watercolourist, book illustrator and stained-glass artist. He was active in the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Nikolaus Pevsner referred to him as the last of the Pre-Raphaelites.
A revival of the art and craft of stained-glass window manufacture took place in early 19th-century Britain, beginning with an armorial window created by Thomas Willement in 1811–12. The revival led to stained-glass windows becoming such a common and popular form of coloured pictorial representation that many thousands of people, most of whom would never commission or purchase a painting, contributed to the commission and purchase of stained-glass windows for their parish church.
The Church of St Martin is a 19th-century church in Marple, Greater Manchester, England.
Waterford is a village in the East Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. It is located on the A119 road, around 2.5 km north of Hertford. The River Beane flows through the village. It is in the civil parish of Stapleford.
The Oxford Union murals (1857–1859) are a series of mural decorations in the Oxford Union library building. The series was executed by a team of Pre-Raphaelite artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. The paintings depict scenes from Arthurian myth.
Peter Paul Marshall was a Scottish civil engineer and amateur painter, and a founding partner of the decorative arts firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Love and the Maiden is an oil painting on canvas by English Pre-Raphaelite artist John Roddam Spencer Stanhope that is currently housed at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
The Sacred Heart Church is a Roman Catholic church and ecclesiastical parish in North Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne. It is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. Situated between Wideopen village to the north and Gosforth Park to the south, the church was made a Grade II listed building in 2006. It is notable for its stained glass windows bearing designs by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, in particular Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
Christ Church, Southgate, is a Church of England parish church in Waterfall Road, Southgate, London. It describes itself as a "liberal catholic Church of England parish". The building is grade II* listed with Historic England. In 2014 the church registered as an Inclusive Church. The church choir makes regular recordings and tours as well as supporting worship on Sundays at 10am and at Choral Evensong at 6.30pm.