Harry Clarke Queens Series Stained Glass Panels After Poem by Synge 2

I wanted some background on the Harry Clarke stained glass panel which formed the image of a jigsaw I've just completed.

 

Top left: All nine panels, in order.

 

Ist: Seven dog-days we let pass/ Naming Queens in Glenmacnass/All the rare and royal names/Wormy sheepskin yet retains

2nd Blues: Etain, Helen, Maeve, and Fand,/ Golden Deirdre's tender hand,

3rd Reds: Bert, the big-foot, sung by Villon,/ Cassandra, Ronsard found in Lyon.

4th Blue: Queens of Sheba, Meath and Connaught,/ Coifed with crown, or gaudy bonnet,

5th Red: Queens whose finger once did stir men,/ Queens were eaten of fleas and vermin,/ Queens men drew like Monna Lisa,/ Or slew with drugs in Rome and Pisa,

6th Blue: We named Lucrezia Crivelli,/ And Titian's lady with amber belly,/ Queens acquainted in learned sin,/ Jane of Jewry's slender shin:

7th Red: Queens who cut the bogs of Glanna,/ Judith of Scripture, and Gloriana,

8th Blue: Queens who wasted the East by proxy,/ Or drove the ass-cart, a tinker's doxy,

9th: Yet these are rotten — I ask their pardon —/ And we've the sun on rock and garden,/ These are rotten, so you're the Queen/ Of all the living, or have been.

 

In 1917, the Irish artist Harry Clarke was commissioned by the Right Honourable Laurence Ambrose Waldron PC to make a series of miniature stained glass panels to illustrate J.M. Synge's poem Queens, to be set as a frieze in his library.

The nine panels were completed in September 1917 and, as Thomas Bodkin wrote of them, "they have no exact precedent in the history of stained glass. They are extraordinarily accomplished technically especially in view of the small area of glass in each panel, and are iconographically intriguing."

Each panel is approximately 300 millimetres high and 180 millimetres wide. They are intricately painted on layered panels of flashed and yellow-stained glass, etched through to as many as six tones on ultramarine blue, sumptuous gold-pink, blue, rich ruby, blue, ruby and blue again. Each queen named in Synge’s twenty six-lined poem is fantastically depicted, whether exotically beautiful, pock-marked, villainous or alluring. Recognisable images of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa , Titian’s Venus with a Mirror, Ambrogio Preda’s so-called Lucrezia Crivelli , Gustav Klimt’s Judith and Holofernes and Gheerhaerts the Younger’s Lady in Fancy Dress mingle among imagined temptresses. As Bodkin commented, Clarke’s happy ability to ‘combine imagination and erudition’ was compelling to Waldron and his circle of connoisseurs.

 

www.irishartsreview.com/articles/a-regal-blaze-harry-clar...

 

Queens by JM Synge

 

Seven dog-days we let pass

Naming Queens in Glenmacnass,

All the rare and royal names

Wormy sheepskin yet retains,

Etain, Helen, Maeve, and Fand,

Golden Deirdre's tender hand,

Bert, the big-foot, sung by Villon,

Cassandra, Ronsard found in Lyon.

Queens of Sheba, Meath and Connaught,

Coifed with crown, or gaudy bonnet,

Queens whose finger once did stir men,

Queens were eaten of fleas and vermin,

Queens men drew like Monna Lisa,

Or slew with drugs in Rome and Pisa,

We named Lucrezia Crivelli,

And Titian's lady with amber belly,

Queens acquainted in learned sin,

Jane of Jewry's slender shin:

Queens who cut the bogs of Glanna,

Judith of Scripture, and Gloriana,

Queens who wasted the East by proxy,

Or drove the ass-cart, a tinker's doxy,

Yet these are rotten — I ask their pardon —

And we've the sun on rock and garden,

These are rotten, so you're the Queen

Of all the living, or have been.

 

Edmund John Millington Synge (pronounced /sɪŋ/) was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre. He is best known for the play The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots during its opening run at the Abbey theatre. Synge wrote many well known plays, including "Riders to the Sea".

Done