A Spiritual Enterprise
Douglas Strachan's Stained Glass in the Memorial Chapel, University of Glasgow
Nick Haynes
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St Andrew (west window, light 1, 1931-7), gifted by Dr James Thomson Bottomley in memory of William
Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, a professor of natural philosophy and chancellor of the university in 1904-7
(All photos: Nick Haynes, reproduced by kind permission of the University of Glasgow, unless otherwise stated) |
The University of Glasgow moved
from the city’s polluted High Street
to George Gilbert Scott’s academic
citadel on rural Gilmorehill in 1870, but the
partially finished complex lacked a chapel.
The renowned architect of the Edward VII
Galleries at the British Museum, John James
Burnet, began planning the completion of the
western quadrangle of Scott’s great edifice with
a new arts block and chapel in 1913. However,
the outbreak of the first world war in 1914
put a stop to all building projects, and it was
January 1923 before work could begin. On
4 October 1929 the ailing principal, Sir Donald
MacAlister, finally dedicated the chapel to the
memory of the 750 university staff, students
and alumni who perished in the Great War.
Burnet looked to 13th-century France for the
Gothic inspiration of his design, and perhaps to
the surviving medieval chapels of the universities
of St Andrews and Aberdeen for character,
scale and details. For the beautiful Arts and
Crafts interior of the chapel, Burnet planned
an open-trussed roof, oak choir stalls and
organ case, stone sculptures, marble memorial
panels and a scheme of stained glass windows.
In November 1919, Burnet consulted
the stained glass artist Douglas Strachan
(pronounced ‘Strawn’) about an early version of
the chapel design and obtained estimated costs
for the window series. Strachan and Burnet were
both members of the Aberdeen Ecclesiological
Society, founded in 1886 by Dr James Cooper,
former Minister of St Nicholas, and from
1899 the professor of ecclesiastical history
at Glasgow.
Cooper is thought to have been
instrumental in securing Strachan’s first two
commissions for the university in the ceremonial
Bute Hall: the Robert Story Memorial Window
of 1907-9, and the Janet Galloway Memorial
Window of 1909-14. Strachan also worked
on the east window of the Burnet-designed
Stenhouse and Carron Parish Church in 1914.
A ‘harmonious scheme of stained glass
windows’ was still on the agenda of the New
Building Committee when it met in March
1927. Unfortunately, the university’s budget
did not stretch to finishing the sculptural
scheme or installing stained glass at the
outset, so the slender lancet windows were
filled initially with a simple pattern of leaded
clear glass supplied by the Abbey Studio
of the City Glass Company, Glasgow.
Principal MacAlister’s health was failing by
the autumn of 1929, and he was clearly keen to
complete the architectural legacy of his period in office by securing Strachan’s services for the
Memorial Chapel windows. On 10 October
1929 MacAlister suddenly announced that he
would retire five days later. Just one day before he
stepped down, the Chapel Committee authorised
Sir Donald to consult again with Strachan about
designing a complete scheme for the chapel
windows that could be implemented as funds
allowed.
Unaware that MacAlister was no longer
in post, Strachan replied enthusiastically on 16
October 1929: ‘Ten years of constant demands
for windows far in excess of the number I could
undertake, may have robbed the letter post of
some of its earlier power to thrill in this way: but
the Complete Extensive Scheme with its superb
possibilities is a thing apart, and always sends the
blood to one’s head – pleasurably’. Thus began
an extraordinary commission that was to occupy
Strachan on and off until his death 21 years later.
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Above left: detail of Strachan’s ‘Tanks, Machinery of War’ window at the Scottish National War Memorial, Edinburgh
(Photo: Antonia Reeve, reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of The Scottish National War Memorial). Above right: design for the Memorial Chapel interior c1928, John Burnet, Son & Dick, watercolours added by Robert Eadie
(Reproduced by kind permission of the University of Glasgow) |
Born in Aberdeen in 1875 and educated at
Robert Gordon’s, Strachan attended evening
classes at Gray’s School of Art while working
as an apprentice lithographer, then studied at
the Life School of the Royal Scottish Academy
in Edinburgh in 1894-5.
After a stint as a
political cartoonist on the Manchester Evening
Chronicle in 1895-7, Strachan returned to
Aberdeen as a mural and portrait painter
before finding his passion for stained glass
in a commission for St Mary’s Chapel of the
historic Parish Kirk of St Nicholas. Among
other commissions in the city, Strachan also
worked for the University of Aberdeen at
King’s College Chapel and at the library of
Marischal College on the John Cruikshank
memorial windows, which celebrated the faculty
of science through the theme of creation.
By 1929 Strachan had gained an
international reputation through the publicity
surrounding his four huge windows of 1911-13
at the Peace Palace in The Hague. He also had
significant experience of designing complete
schemes, such as the Lowson Memorial Kirk in
Forfar of 1914-16, and war memorial windows
including those of 1923-7 for the Scottish
National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle.
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‘Medicine’ (window 4, north wall, 1934-5), in memory of Sir Donald MacAlister: ‘the basic idea of the image as
a whole is “Health-Energy set against Suffering-Exhaustion” … I have purposely planned the composition so that
the doctor may seem to be easing the Sufferer’s movement down, or up – in accord with the spectator’s mood at
the moment’ (Douglas Strachan, November 1934) |
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Although the university’s Hunterian
Museum and Art Gallery holds only one
preliminary design or ‘cartoon’ relating to the
chapel windows (the Alma Mater window),
the university archives contain an extensive
correspondence between Douglas Strachan
and Principal MacAlister and his successors,
Robert Rait from late October 1929 and
Hector Hetherington from 1936. These letters
are remarkable for the light they shed on
Strachan’s creative processes and the evolution
of an exceptional series of artistic works.
Strachan studied the chapel carefully
to capture its ‘personality’ and the ‘local
or community tang’, observing the light at
different times of day and noting various
practical bearings on the scheme so that the
new windows could ‘look as if they had grown
there naturally and inevitably’.
Although
Principal MacAlister had initially suggested an
Old Testament theme based on Hebrews 11,
his successor Robert Rait was keen to allow
Strachan freedom to select the best treatment
for the space and not impose artistic restrictions. Eventually, after a period of
illness, Strachan sent a key plan with notes and estimates to Principal Rait in December 1930.
In this document Strachan set out the defining
principles of his scheme as ‘an attempt to figure
man’s life, all life, as engaged on a spiritual
enterprise: to visualise our little planet moving
on through infinite space – or perhaps one ought
now to say Finite Space, whatever that may
mean: man’s unceasing search and endeavour to
comprehend the universe and his own spiritual
aspirations, and to find one image for both’. His note continues with a more detailed
description of the arrangement of the windows:
Planned in sections this gives for the 12 lights in the
N. & S. Walls. The Universe, creation of Solar system, earth, man:
symbolised by the Signs of the Zodiac (subject-matter
of the “bosses” in the 6 N. wall windows: 2 Signs to
each boss: the “Days” or stages of creation (in the
corresponding position on the S. wall): and below
these in the full length lights eight figures (one in each
light) typifying the various domains of man’s thought
and search (and therefore the work of Universities)
N.
Theology, Law, Medicine,
Applied Science
S. Philosophy, Literature and Arts, History,
Science
Or any other group deemed more representative:
these forming a connecting passage between:
History: the daily life of the community in
the West Window, and Revelation: a kind of
Benedicte window with Spirit dominating: East.
The cost of each window was set out in the note,
with £700 each for individual lancets, £235 for
the four small part-lancets in the nave, £5,200
for the four-light west window and £3,600 for
the three-light east window. As can be seen from
the pricing, Strachan intended to give greater
elaboration to the main east and west windows.
He estimated that it would take two years to clear
his workload before a start could be made on the
chapel commission.
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St Columba (west window, light 2, 1931-7), gifted by Lady Mechin. |
Strachan worked from his
house, Pittendreich, in Lasswade, Midlothian,
which had been designed by David Bryce in 1857
and specially adapted by Sir Robert Lorimer in
1928-9 to accommodate Strachan’s glass studio
and kilns. A number of assistants were employed,
who were allocated cottages on the small estate.
The decorative elements of the windows
were closely interwoven with the subject matter,
as in the Scottish National War Memorial
windows where there are similar motifs and
themes. The jagged or curvilinear shapes of the
painted glass panes are emphasised by their
leaded surrounds, and along with the varying
intensity and pattern of colour they cleverly
provide a sense of movement or emotion to
the distinct zones of the windows.
There is no
narrative structure as such but the windows are
organised internally into themes. For example
in the great west window, the saints occupy the
central zone of each lancet, while scenes from
history are placed at the top and bottom. Signs
of the zodiac are located in the top zones of
the nave windows, with contemporary figures
representing the various branches of knowledge
below.
With the exception of the representations
of ‘Alma Mater’ and Charity, all the principal
figures are male. Although Strachan never
completed the chancel windows, he planned
to emphasise the shrine-like appearance of
the communion table and memorial tablets.
The University Court, led by Principal
Rait, welcomed Strachan’s proposals and set
about finding donors for each of the windows.
Numerous potential donors were approached
and by April 1931 seven windows were promised.
The first of the windows to be commissioned
was the rose window in the west wall, which
was dedicated in memory of the late university
chancellor, Lord Rosebery, on 21 February 1932.
Strachan explained to Principal Rait that ‘as a
rose window should be rich and jewel-like, I have
allowed myself a slightly larger proportion of rich
colour in this window than will be permissible
in the others’.
The scheme then progressed along
the north wall of the chapel, with Aries and
Taurus, Gemini and Cancer, Applied Science and
Theology dedicated in 1934 and Medicine in 1935.
The chancel arch windows and the Alma Mater
window in the choir gallery followed in 1937.
Lights 1 (St Andrew) and 2 (St Columba)
of the four-light west window were finally
dedicated in October 1937, some six years
after the initial designs were submitted. It
is clear from his correspondence that they
presented Strachan with the most complicated
technical problems of his career to date:
‘The effect I sought has proved maddeningly
elusive at times and before I got it I must have
made, smashed, and remade the equivalent
of four windows’.
Strachan also undertook
considerable research in order to make the
historical details as accurate as possible. The
Philosophy window also caused Strachan
much anxiety, which delayed it to the point
that the donor withdrew his offer in 1939.
At the outset of the second world war,
the two completed panels were removed
from the west window of the chapel for safe
storage in Edinburgh, alongside the windows
of the Scottish National War Memorial.
In
spite of the restrictions and wartime gloom,
Robert Rait’s successor Principal Hetherington
instructed Strachan to proceed with the final
two lights of the west window: St Kentigern
and St Ninian. These were completed relatively
quickly, by April 1941, but also placed in
storage for the duration of the war, this time
in Strachan’s old doocot at Pittendreich.
The
whole scheme for the great west window first
came together in the chapel at the dedication
of the St Kentigern and St Ninian lights on
3 December 1945.
Although Strachan had produced designs for the other windows, and
discussions continued between Strachan and
Principal Hetherington throughout the 1940s,
these were to be his final contributions to
the decoration of the chapel. Other stained
glass artists completed the programme in a
variety of styles in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
‘You once expressed the hope that I “would
give you something as good as the S[cottish]
N[ational] War Memorial window scheme”. With
a scheme such as the proposed plan submitted
herewith I can quite definitely promise you
something better’. These were Strachan’s words
to Principal Rait in December 1930. Sadly,
Strachan only lived to finish nine of the projected
18 windows in the Memorial Chapel at Glasgow,
but his genius is amply displayed in these
outstanding examples of the art of stained glass.
~~~
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge
the assistance of Elizabeth Cumming,
Lesley Richmond (Archivist and Deputy
Director of the Library, University of Glasgow),
Stuart MacQuarrie (Chaplain, University of
Glasgow), Elizabeth McCrone (Head of Listing,
Historic Scotland), Shona Elliott (Curator
for Documentation and Fine Art, University
of Aberdeen Museums), Vanessa Stephen,
Margaret Taylor, and Nigel Wallace.
Recommended Reading
A Carruthers, The Arts and Crafts Movement in
Scotland: A History, Yale University Press,
New Haven, 2013
P Cormack, ‘In Praise of Douglas Strachan
(1875-1950)’ in The Journal of Stained
Glass, vol XXX, BSMGP, London, 2006
E Cumming, Hand, Heart and Soul: the Arts
and Crafts Movement in Scotland, Birlinn,
Edinburgh, 2006
M Donnelly, Scotland’s Stained Glass – Making
the Colours Sing, The Stationery Office,
Edinburgh, 1997
J MacDonald, Visions Through Glass: The Work
of Douglas Strachan, Crawford Arts Centre,
St Andrews, 2002
D Macmillan, Scotland’s Shrine: The Scottish
National War Memorial, Lund Humphries,
London, 2014
AC Russell, Stained Glass Windows of
Douglas Strachan, 3rd edition, Pinkfoot
Press, Balgavies, 2002
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Historic Churches, 2014
Author
NICK HAYNES MA IHBC is a freelance
historic environment consultant, architectural
historian and photographer. He is the author of Building Knowledge:
An Architectural History of the University
of Glasgow (Historic Scotland, 2013).
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