Corpus Vitrearum - Centre André Chastel

Résumés des communicationsmercredi 5 juilletArchitecture (London 1837) and Shaw’s edition ofWalter Gidde’s 1615 Book of Sundry Draughtesprincipally serving for Glaziers (London 1848).Throughout his career,Willement collected imagesof medieval and renaissance stained glass, carefullymounted in large albums.His study was not confinedto England, for he had travelled in both France andGermany. His sketches are preserved in the BritishLibrary, together with his albums of designs for newstained glass 5 . In about 1834 Willement began workon « A Historical Essay on the Stained and Paintingof Glass », in which he attempted a historical surveyof glass painting,to be illustrated with specific examplesdrawn from his own collection 6 . It is exactly atthis pointing his career that he abandons the pictorialstyles of his early career and became a thoroughexponent of the authentic Gothic Revival. It is notknown why this work was never completed and preparedfor publication, for Willement certainly hadplenty of contacts in the London publishing world,and by 1840 was sufficiently well established andwealthy to have been able to fund the publication.By1840,however,he was also immensely busy.His practicewas diversifying and expanding and he had begunwork on the first of his windows for St George’s ChapelWindsor, a commission that was to last for over twentyyears 7 . His Windsor work, executed not in Winston’ssuperior new ‘antique’ glass,but in the relatively thin andbrightly coloured glasses of the late Georgian period, isa triumph in terms of design and execution,revealing hismastery of both his sources and his materials.That hisstained glass treatise remained unpublished is a matterfor regret, for the breadth of his historical studies andhis technical skill rivalled those of his friend and betterknowncontemporary, Charles Winston.Fig. 3 The arms of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou in thestained glass at Ockwells Manor, drawn by Thomas Willementand published in 1821 in Regal Heraldry :The Armorial Insignia ofthe Kings and Queens of England.1. The Ecclesiologist, 3, 1844, p. 16-20.2. Memoirs Illustrative of the Art of Glass Painting, London, 1865.3. London, British Library, Add. Ms 34783, fol.27. For Fonthill seeClive Wainwright, The Romantic Interior.The British Collector at Home1750-1850, New Haven and New York, 1989, p. 109-146.4. Annales Archéologiques, t.VI, 1847, p. 66.5. Brown (Sarah), « So Perfectly Satisfactory :The Stained Glass ofThomas Willement in St George’s Chapel », A History of the StainedGlass of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in Sarah Brown (ed.)Windsor, 2005, p. 109-145.6. London, British Library Add. Ms 36588.7. London, British Library,Add. Ms 34866-34873.39