Friday 29 April 2016

Feathered Regulars


                     


updated
Fri. 3 Feb. 2017






I found the same week the latest Margaret Rope of Shrewsbury _ Stained Glass Artist of the Arts & Crafts Movement by Arthur Rope, as well as Women Stained Glass Artists of the Arts & Crafts Movement by Peter Cormack published 30 years ago for an exhibition at the William Morris Gallery.

Eagle




After more research on web pages, I noticed, that Marga and her cousin Tor have a wild life bestiary  no other stained glass artists of the Arts & Crafts movement seems to have had. I will say I do not have the knowledge of all artwork of this movement and leave this observation I do open to critics.

Marga's windows have birds as the regulars of her house! She does not seem to use it as Christian Symbolism only. In her window for her nephew and niece I study bellow, the black bird, the owl, the woodpecker do not seem to present as baddies ( for an example, in this web page listing birds and their symbolism , "The blackbird represents the darkness of sin (black feathers) and the temptations of the flesh (its beautiful song). Once, while Saint Benedict was praying, the devil tried to distract him, appearing as a blackbird. St. Benedict, however, was not fooled, and sent him on his way with the Sign of the Cross.")
The black contre-jour of medium size birds just above horizons or behind figures ( St Peter and St Paul in Newport, Shropshire), a few flights of white doves or flocks of other birds may have meaning I am not aware of (visitation window in Shrewsbury Cathedral).

contre-jour
flights of birds Visitation window Shrewsbury Cathedral
tail's end black_common gull,  ochre wings_song thrush




just one contra-jour before branches 

Today as I am writing this post, I also took a photo of the contra-jour of a dove 






Earlier this year, I spotted a mockingbird in her Visitation Window in Shrewsbury Cathedral.



mockingbird

From that day I read all her windows searching for birds or wildlife.
I wanted to identify the wildlife she painted in her windows to open later choices for the workshop or design of our window for Shrewsbury Museum.

After my reading of the books mentioned above, I believe that her cousin took much inspiration or shared much of Marga's interest in painting animals of Great-Britain's fauna or wildlife of other countries in the artwork.
I will first keep updating this post for sharing  the birds I identified in her windows.





In one of Marga's earliest works entitled Goblin Market (inspired by a poem by Christina Rossetti)
an Australian Grass Parokeet stands in the left top corner as well as a blue tit hides in the leafy twigs.

Australian Grass Parokeet
Blue Tit





The most dazzling of her birds statements is in The Benedicte window
Church of Our Lady, Llandovery, Carmarthenshire




Given in memory of Herbert and Teresa Vaughan, the nephew and niece of the artist, both of whom died in childhood and are depicted in the window. Had she have times of study of birds with her nephew and niece? 



In Marga's artwork a bird story kept building parallel to all other themes she worked at.


In St Winefrede's window, Newport, the birds have truly a meaning in the landscape. A dipper by the well, a lesser redpoll in the woody leafy background, a kingfisher appearing by her arm in its flight which is an other bird of waters or a solitary bird.




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More of her artwork to study maybe in the near future, considering her windows have many feathered regulars.




turtle doves
House sparrows?

turtle doves with a dunnock or a small tree finch (Geospiza Parvulus)?  
short-toed lark
in Lanark, St Mary's, Scotland, the Pelican,
"symbol of Christ feeding its young with its own blood"





A short note:
As my windows will refer to collections of Shrewsbury Museum, Charles Darwin's work being of the collections, I wish even more wish to read a little bit about the Finches of the Galapagos and more than anything else his study of doves/pigeons.  http://darwinspigeons.com/#/victorian-pigeon-poems/4535732923. ( I photographed many doves in the birch tree I have sketched for the Marga & Collections artwork )