By Georgina Maltby and Andrew Loutit. Paperback, 120 pages, 210mm x 250mm, over 150 colour illustrations, privately printed, 2018, ISBN 978 1 5272 2192 5, £20.
Martin Crampin
The general paucity of good information on many British Arts and Crafts stained glass artists is in marked contrast to the qualities and visual appeal of so much of their work. One such artist, Theodora Salusbury, has now been recognised in a new book (Fig. 1), written and produced by Andrew Loutit and Georgina Maltby, a great nephew and a cousin of the artist, including information on all of her known work. Miss Salusbury, as she is referred to throughout the book, was one of many talented women designing and making stained glass for churches in the early years of the twentieth century, inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement, and her work can be found in churches across England, as well as single examples in Wales and at an unknown location in South Africa.
Theodora Salusbury grew up in Leicester and attended the School of Art in about 1894, before studying in London at the Royal College of Art, the Central School of Arts and Crafts and the Slade School of Art in the early years of the twentieth century, benefiting from the teaching of the influential artists Christopher Whall and Karl Parsons. Most of her work is found in churches, but she also undertook domestic commissions and at least one commission for a school. She lived between the wars in St Agnes, Cornwall, although about half of all of her windows are found in Leicestershire, where she retained family connections. The family also had deep links with the Church and her own deep Christian faith may be reflected in her choice of the peacock as her signature, a symbol of the Resurrection.
The book contains a richly illustrated introduction to her life and work, followed by lists of all of her known windows; both a list made by the artist and an expanded list based on the research of the authors. Following this initial section, each of the extant windows are well illustrated and provided with notes on the subject matter and the commissioning of the windows, with the addition of an image of the exterior of the church and a few interior contextual views. Each instance of the artist’s signature mark, a peacock, is also illustrated, demonstrating considerable variation in design from window to window. There are also listings and illustrations of four further panels, probably all exhibition pieces. The windows are arranged in alphabetical order by county and by church, which keeps windows at the same church together, but sacrifices chronology, which can be instructive in terms of stylistic development. Furthermore, dates of windows in the book are hard to locate, as they are omitted from the captions and need to be sought out in lists and in the text.
Most of her windows consist of rather static standing figures, although some are arranged in biblical scenes. Among her most original compositions is the east window at Newchurch, Monmouthshire (Fig. 2), depicting the Adoration of the Magi, in which she elevates the Virgin & Child to the large upper roundel, surrounded by birds and a starry sky; the adoring Magi look up from below, in the company of a favourite dog of Sir William Edward Carne Curre, in whose memory the window was given.
Although few of her windows have any particular dynamism or an original approach to their subject matter, her windows are distinguished by the effective choice of antique slab glass, the avoidance of repetitive and conventional decorative borders, and the painterliness of her work (although she reportedly did not like the term painting, which conveyed the idea of adding colour, rather than painting in brown glass paint on colour). In these respects, her work has much in common with other stained glass artists who either worked at, or had their windows assembled by, the studios of Lowndes & Drury in Fulham, such as Karl Parsons, Wilhelmina Geddes, the cousins Margaret and M.E. Aldrich Rope, and Caroline Townshend.
Some well-chosen details of her windows show off her work to good effect, and the book is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of working drawings and cartoons, many of which have a real charm of their own, none more so than the warmth and humanity of the Virgin & Child, opposite page 1 (Fig. 3). The drawing is undated and is most closely related to a panel in private ownership, although this depiction of the Virgin and Child is very similar to that found in other finished windows.
The amount of fieldwork, research and dedication required to complete such a study is considerable, as is the photographic skill needed to attempt to represent the colour and power of the windows in print, and the number of good quality photographs are an essential component of the success of the book. Studies like this are rare and the book is to be welcomed by all who have interests in ecclesiastical art of the twentieth century.
A version of this review was first published in the Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture, 5, no. 1 (2019), 114–16. Vidimus is grateful to the publishers for their kind permission to reproduce it here.
Copies of Theodora Salusbury, Stained Glass Artist 1875–1956, by Georgina Maltby and Andrew Loutit, can be ordered online, for £20 plus P&P.