Glasby’s career was enhanced by Henry Holiday, who commissioned stained glass windows from Powell & Sons made to his own designs. Holiday favoured Glasby for painting the most important sections of figurative work.
Henry Holiday (1839-1927) was born in the Fitzroy Square area of London, where his father ran a private school, later he resided in Hampstead from the late 1860s. Holiday was trained as an artist by William Cave Thomas. Later, he attended Leigh's art academy (where a fellow student was Frederick Walker) and in 1855, at the age of 15, Holiday was admitted to the Royal Academy.
Through his friendship with Albert Moore and Simeon Solomon, he was introduced to the artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Holiday had an ambition was to become a painter in the style of Rossetti, but finished few subjects because he was committed to carrying out lengthy research before beginning to paint. [1]
In 1855, at the age of sixteen, Holiday visited the Lake District and for many years afterwards used the landscapes and tranquillity of the area to paint. [2 ]
In 1861, Holiday accepted the position of stained glass window designer for Powell's Glass Works, after Burne-Jones had left to work for Morris & Co. Holiday did not have any previous experience of painting in stained glass, but was recommended to Powell’s by the artist Albert Moore (1841-1893). He began designing stained glass for Powell & Sons in order to earn an adequate income to marry Catherine Raven, a daughter of the wealthy vicar of Preston, Lancs. His wife was a talented embroiderer who worked for Morris & Co. They had one daughter, Winifred.
He also designed for Lavers and Barraud, [3 ] Heaton Butler and Bayne [ 4] and other significant studios. During this time Holiday is attributed with designing some 300 commissions. [ 5 ] The most significant pieces of work in the UK are the West Window of Southwark Cathedral, Westminster Abbey (the Isambard Kingdom Brunel memorial window, 1868), Waltham Abbey, Salisbury Cathedral. His work is also seen in the chapel of Worcester College, Oxford (c.1865); St Luke's Church, Kentish Town; St Mary Magdalene, Paddington (1869); and Chartered Accountants' Hall, Moorgate.
In 2018, four of his stained-glass windows were reinstalled in Chartered Accountants' Hall after being lost for almost 50 years following their removal for an extension in 1970. [6]
Holiday fulfilled over three hundred commissions, with the US a lucrative market for over fifty years. [ 7 ] Holiday gained an entry into the US market in 1876 at the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia. One of his best windows is considered to be in the Holy Trinity Church, New York. Hadley et al (2008) found some detailed examples of costings and timings in a ledger covering this period which is now in the Museum of London collections.
Henry Holiday enhanced his love of the Lake District by designing a number of windows for local churches. For example, a figure painting for two large windows at Forfar, Scotland (1888) occupied 2461 hours to which Glasby contributed 200 hours; the following year he contributed 33 out of 237 hours for figure work for St John’s Church at Keswick in the Lake District [8] and 49 and a half hours out of 276 hours costed at 1s 2 3/4 d per hour, for St Mary’s Church in Ambleside Glasby costed considerably more than any other painter. [ 9 ]
In 1890 Powell made a significant loss on a Holiday window made for Groton College, Massachusetts, USA, because Glasby (at 1s 4 d per hour) was used for 70 and a half out of the 186 and a 1/2 hours of figure painting.[9] We were in touch with Groton College in 2021 and it was confirmed that the Holiday windows were still in place. [10]
Notes
[1] Rossetti’s influence is seen in Holiday’s stained glass work: https://web.archive.org/web/20121002232413/http://www.standrews.ac.uk/about/UniversityChapels/ChapelofStSalvator/StainedglassofStSalvators/Thestainedgl assofHenryHoliday/
[3] Lavers, Barraud & Westlake (1855-1920s) was a London-based firm originally established in 1855 by Nathaniel Wood Lavers (1828-1911). The firm changed its name several times with the arrival and departure of each partner. Francis Barraud (1824-1900) became a partner in 1858 and Nathaniel Westlake joined the partnership in 1868, having designed for the firm since 1858. Other artists designing for the firm from the late 1850s included Henry Stacy Marks and John Milner Allen. After the death of Barraud in 1900 the firm was known as Lavers, Westlake and Co., although Westlake had been the sole proprietor since 1880. After 1909 the company became N H J Westlake, London, and closed in the 1920s.
[4] Heaton, Butler & Bayne (1852-1953) was a Stained glass firm founded in 1852 by Clement Heaton (1824-82), who was influenced by Pugin. Heaton's research into pigments resulted in an extended range of colours. Prior to establishing his own firm in London, he had previously worked for William Holland. James Butler (1830-1913) became a partner in 1855, and in 1862 Robert Turnill Bayne (1837-1915), who had worked with John Richard Clayton at Clayton & Bell, entered the partnership. The firm continued to be run by their sons and closed in 1953 following the death of Basil Richmond Bayne, by which time most of their work was for clients in North America.
[5] There is a collection of his work in the V & A Museum. Panel | Holiday, Henry | Holiday, Henry | V&A Explore The Collections (vam.ac.uk)
"The windows were originally commissioned for Chartered Accountants’ Hall in Moorgate Place and installed in 1897 but removed in 1970 as William Whitfield’s Brutalist extension was added to the building. "
"These windows were made after 1890 when he took artistic control at his own workshop in Hampstead."
"In his Reminiscences of My Life, Holiday records that in 1896 he was invited by the ICAEW to enter a competition for the design of four 11ft 4in (3.5m) staircase windows to match the blend of Renaissance and Baroque styles used by architect John Belcher (1841-1913).
Holiday apparently struggled to gain inspiration from the subject but chose the themes of enterprise, commerce, law and finance. Holiday’s original watercolour designs are in the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The windows ended up in the collection of Peter Grant (1935-95), manager of Led Zeppelin, and reappeared on the market again in August 2014 at Dreweatts in Newbury. Bought by decorative arts specialists Sinai & Sons, they were shown at Masterpiece in 2016."
[7] George B Bryant, “Frank Furness and Henry Holiday: A Study of Patronage, Architecture and Art”, Architectural History, Vol. 56 (2013), pp. 169-211.
[8} For description of the Windows and their history see: https://keswickstjohn.org.uk/windows
[9] Details of Holiday’s work can be found in The Arts Society archives: https://theartssociety.org/james-powell .
Our thanks to Remi S. Dyll, Collection Manager, The Bayou Bend Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, for this reference.
[10] Groton College is now Groton School, and in 2021 confirmed that five of Holiday Windows still survive. Out thanks to Gail Friedman, Director of Communications, Groton School. Gail kindly contacted the school archivist, Doug Brown, who told us that the windows are a memorial to Alexander Thomson and are in St. John's Chapel on the Groton School campus. The windows date from 1889, and their subject is the story of Joseph and his brothers. Further information can be found in George B. Bryant, in the Fall 2013 issue of Architectural History, Vol. 56:2013, pages 169-211, by the Society of Architectural Historians in Great Britain.
(c) Erika Szyszczak, 22 June 2021
Comments