Lot 51
CHARLES EAMER KEMPE (1837-1907)
PAIR OF GOTHIC REVIVAL STAINED GLASS PANELS, CIRCA 1905
Paul Reeves: An Eye for Design feat. Textiles as Art II | 548
Auction: 14 February 2019 at 11:00 GMT
Description
each comprised of two windows, the upper depicting an angel, with characteristic peacock feather wings and rich attire, reserved on a foliate ground, the lower panels with architectural tracery, each bearing an inscription AND THE WINE HIS BLOOD HE MAKETH/ YET NO FAITHFUL HEART IT SHAKETH and WHAT THOUGH SENSE NO CHAGE CAN SWW/ FAITH CAN TEACH THE MYSTERY, framed (2)
Dimensions
taller panels 80.5cm x 33cm, smaller panels 42.5cm x 33cm
Footnote
Provenance: The Second Chapel of The Holy Order, Haywards Heath, 1905.
Note: These windows were removed from the church in 1999 when the church was converted into a domestic residence. Kempe set up his own studio in London in 1866, supplying and creating stained glass and furnishings and vestments, and by 1899 he had over fifty employees. Kempe’s home county of Sussex has 116 examples of his work including the present example.
Rosalie Glynn Grylls, Lady Mander, whose home Wightwick Manor, near Wolverhampton, contains many pieces of Kempe's stained glass, wrote in 1973: "Kempe's work has a unique charm; its colours shine out from jewels that cluster on the mitres or the crowns his figures wear and from their peacocks' feathers, while angels playing their instruments are drawn with tender delicacy and scattered above the main windows informally but making a pattern of precision. Above all, the prevailing yellow wash is literally translucent, for it lets through the rays of the full or the setting sun..."