The Ascension

William Morris

Date: c. 1862

Materials: Brush and Indian ink, with brown ink, over pencil

First schemes

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company, founded in April 1861, made a spectacular beginning with three major schemes for stained glass in new churches by the architect George Frederick Bodley, including St. Michael's, Brighton and St. Martin's, Scarborough. At All Saints, Selsley, near Stroud in Gloucestershire, Morris provided fifteen windows in one of the most complete sets the firm ever made, and many of the individual subjects are to his own design.

Dramatic design

The Ascension is the first of the five windows in the chancel apse at Selsley, each of a single light with a simple circular tracery window above. Strongly leaded, these clear and dramatic designs remain medieval in spirit (appropriately, for a major Gothic Revival building), and yet share the equally important Pre-Raphaelite characteristics of bold draughtsmanship and uncluttered detail.

Early Morris windows such as these contrast with most commercial stained glass of the period, just as the first Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood canvases do with contemporary painting, and as such they mark a watershed in the development of nineteenth-century ecclesiastical art.