St. Luke’s church, Wallsend,Northumberland (Tyne & Wear ): east window

St. Luke’s church, Wallsend, Northumberland (Tyne & Wear)

East window, Crucifixion

Wilhelmina Margaret Geddes (1887-1955)

Memorial to the fallen of the parish in the Great War; unveiled 14 July 1922

 

 

Wilhelmina M. Geddes was born in Drumreilly, Co. Leitrim, and attended Belfast Methodist College and later the (Belfast) School of Art, before joining (1910) William Orpen’s (1878-1931) classes at the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin. Whilst there, her graphic work came to the attention of Sarah Purser (1848-1943), the Parisian trained portraitist and energetic director of the An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass) cooperative of stained glass artists (established 1 January 1903). Purser suggested that Geddes take up stained glass, and invited her to join An Túr Gloine, and from the first, her powerfully individual designs remained amongst the most uncompromisingly Modernist creations of the studio, complementing her extensive graphic output. As with all of the An Túr Gloine artists, her windows were the work of her own hands, intensely personal examples of modern Irish art in the spirit (but not the style) of the English Arts and Crafts movement. Always dogged by ill health, she moved to London in 1925, taking studio space at Messrs. Lowndes & Drury; at the time, the only purpose-built studios – complete with ‘in-house’ technical staff – available for rent by individual stained glass artists, and where some of the leading talents of the period could meet and work alongside each other.

 

Geddes’ first window to command international recognition was a commission (1919) from the Duke of Connaught for St. Bartholomew’s church, Ottawa (Canada), commemorating those of the Governor General’s staff killed in the Great War. Her later south transept rose window (1934-8) for the rebuilt St. Martin’s cathedral, Ypres – the gift of the British Forces in memory of King Albert I of the Belgians – was an equally notable achievement, but the acknowledged favourite amongst all her works was the Wallsend Crucifixion, at twenty-four feet high, her largest window to date, heroic in scale and of searing emotional intensity. She never saw it installed in situ.

 

That St. Luke’s parish should turn to An Túr Gloine for their memorial window was not in itself surprising – after all, the Rector of Wallsend, The Revd. Canon Charles Edward Osborne, was a brother of the Irish ‘Impressionist’ artist Walter Osborne (1859-1903), and consequently on friendly terms with Sarah Purser. Canon Osborne had accordingly encouraged the commissioning of a series of An Túr Gloine windows for the sister parish of St. Peter’s – executed by Michael Healey (1873-1941) and Ethel Rhind (c.1879-1952). But in the choice of Geddes for St. Luke’s, one perhaps suspects the hand of Prof. Richard G. Hatton (1864-1926), Principal of the King Edward VII School of Art at Armstrong College, through his position on various Diocesan advisory bodies.

 

The window betrays not only her knowledge of contemporary German graphic work by the likes of Emil Nolde, Ludwig Kirchner and Käthe Kolwitz, but also the influence of ancient Assyrian and Archaic Greek monumental sculpture, which she had admired during her studies at the British Museum – she liked to refer to her big, muscular figures jokingly as ‘ruffians’. In this taste for a monumental ‘primitivism’ she was much closer to her contemporaries as sculptors, such as Gilbert Ledward, Charles Sargeant Jagger and Gilbert Bayes (and perhaps Eric Gill), than were most British stained glass artists of the period. Moreover, the window is unusual amongst war memorials in not bearing a dedicatory inscription, nor any form of expository text with which to locate the meaning of the imagery – indeed, there is no overt reference to the War at all.

 

What the viewer will undoubtedly take away with them is an apprehension of a universal tragedy that renders the attendant figures, and ourselves, dumbstruck. To the traditional mourners are added the figures of Longinus (far right), and Joseph of Arimathea (far left) through whom Geddes is able to make the necessary topical allusion. The centurion Longinus stands in as a representative of the armed forces, and he is moreover the only figure to look up to the Cross, indicative of his dawning awareness of Christ’s divinity (Gospel of Luke 23.47). St. Joseph’s presence, as the legendary bearer of the Crown of Thorns to England, and Glastonbury, subtly alludes to the patriotic hymn Jerusalem (and the ancient tradition that Jesus Himself visited these islands, as encapsulated in William Blake’s famous lines). Smaller scaled scenes are disposed about the window in a manner reminiscent of Irish High Crosses. The twin poles of existence, Death and Life, are encompassed by the Cross itself - the skull of Golgotha, and Christ’s Deposition at it’s foot, whilst at the head of the window, the Risen Christ and His disciples supp in the Eucharistic banquet at the end of time. Scenes of the ‘Road to Emmaus’, when Christ ‘was known of them in the breaking of bread’ (Gospel of Luke 24.35), and the soldier offering Jesus a drink on the road to Calvary, relate to the Eucharistic action at the altar below. And most poignantly for a war memorial, at the far right, the angels rush to meet the Holy Women on the first Easter morning because ‘He is not here...’ (Luke 24.6).

 

The window was unveiled on the evening of Friday 14 July, 1922, and for a while seems to have acted as a surrogate for Wallsend’s civic memorial (by the architect Newberry Trent of Chelsea) which was delayed (it was not ready until September 1925). Yet in comparison with the often hundreds of thousands of pounds expended on the great civic war memorials, Geddes’ window cost little more than £800. Was ever a masterpiece such a bargain? The dedication ceremony was attended by the Mayor (Alderman J. Mullen), Sir George B. Hunter (Chairman of the neighbouring Swan & Hunter shipyards), and Bishop Taylor Smith (Chaplain General of His Majesty’s Forces), who gave the address. Lady Hunter unveiled both the window and the bronze memorial tablet (affixed to the chancel arch), but it was at the latter from where ‘Reveille’ and ‘The Last Post’ were sounded, where laurel wreaths were laid, and from where the names of the fallen were read out aloud. Although newspaper reports offer several good descriptions of Wilhelmina Geddes’ window, none explain its significance as a war memorial. The Mayor and Corporation also attended morning service on the following Sunday, but that evening, the scholars and teachers of the Sunday school dedicated their own, much smaller memorial window in the south aisle (executed by Messrs, Reed, Millican & Co. of Newcastle) [Newcastle Daily Journal, Friday, Saturday 15 July 1922, also Newcastle Evening Chronicle, Sat. 15 July 1922 & Monday 17 July 1922.]

 

The photograph is a digital montage of 16 images.

Done