Afemoir Illustrative of the Art of Glass - Painting. By the late
C. Winston, of the Inner Temple. Illustrated with engravings from the author's original drawings. By P. H. Delamotte, F.S.A. (Murray.)—. We cordially welcome this handsome volume. It would have been highly unsatisfactory in the interest of the public, and very unjust to the late Mr. Winston, if the information which he had collected with such an.expenditure of time and labour had not been given to the world in a convenient form. Probably no one in England had studied the art of glass-painting so long and so minutely in all its bearings as himself, and whatever people may think of the theories which he based upon the knowledge that he had acquired, there are few who will dispute the value of the knowledge itself, or of the service that he rendered in improving the quality of the material, and reviving to some extent the rich colours and low tone of ancient glass. But ho went on to maintain that no richness of colour can supply the want of art, and pointed to the period A.D.1530-50 as the time when glass-painting reached its perfection, when "perspective and light and shade were no longer disregarded." Thisis the theory which has been called in question,—is a painted window to bo a transparent picture, artistically treated as far as is allowed by the nature of the material and the necessity of fixing with lead its compo- nent parts, or is it to be simply a display of rich colour with fiat figures ? Mr. Winston held the former view, and sent the Glasgow folks to Munich for the windows of their cathedral, considering that though the German glass was not so good as the English made under his directions, yet the painting was better, the English style being rained by anti- quarianism. "There are but two styles which should be studied," he says, "the Early style, about A.D. 1200-50, more fit for severe buildings, and the style of A.D. 1530-50, for buildings of a more ornamental character. The greater flatness of the earlier style is no objection to it, provided that the figures executed in it do not appear to be flat." The question is ably argued in one of the papers in the present volume, and also in the interesting correspondence that took place between Mr. Winston and Mr. C. H. Wilson on the subject of the Glasgow windows. Besides this, however, the volume contains a mass of information about the value of which there can be no difference of. opinion. We have, in addition to a short biographical'
memoir, descriptions of the more celebrated painted glass in this country, illustrated with admirable engravings, a history of the art of glass-painting, an explanation of the different methods and uses as applied to buildings in various styles of architecture, and finally an account of that revival of the manufacture of the old glass which Mr. Winston may be said to have partially effected after much labour and perseverance.
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