Article
“The Creation of a ‘Transcendental Experience’: Stained Glass by Christopher Wallis for St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Ontario.”
The Journal of Stained Glass
(2022)
Abstract
On 6 February 1996 art enthusiasts and parishioners of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, Ontario in Canada, held a meet-the-artist event to celebrate the unveiling of three stained glass windows dedicated to the mission and martyrdom of the church’s patron saint. The richly-coloured windows illustrating Paul the Apostle, Paul as Saint and Paul as Martyr, were made the year before by English-born artist Christopher Wallis (1930-2021), a Fellow of the British Society of Master Glass Painters. For Wallis and the parish community, the event marked a decade-long effort to commission, design, produce, and install the impressive scheme of large-scale windows (5.7m high by 1.3m wide). In discussing the scheme and his practice more generally, Wallis asked of all who attended (and continue to attend) the church to consider how ‘the inner environment has been enhanced through the beauty of the light and colour’. In so doing, Wallis sought to have his windows reflect the era of their production, like those that already existed in the Cathedral. The aim of Wallis’s artistic practice was to establish an environment that fostered a 'transcendental experience’. Further, The three lancet windows installed in the Cathedral’s north nave achieve this goal through his intricate use of pattern using leading and glasspainting, narrative vignettes and placement of strong emotive colour. Wallis was sixty-six years old when he began designs for the windows in 1994 and he fully understood the significance of the church’s history in the Diocese of Huron. The commission demonstrates the level of maturity he had reached in his chosen career and practice. Wallis’s dedication is evident in his thoughtful iconographical programme, meticulous techniques and use of the highest quality of glass.
Wallis had a long and illustrious career that spanned over four decades in Canada. His output is significant: between 1956 and 2005 he designed and produced approximately 800 works, with commissions ranging from single windows to dozens of lights illustrating entire ecclesiastical cycles, for churches across Canada and the United States. The considerable range and diversity of his oeuvre is beyond the scope of this article, so we will focus here on the St Paul windows as an exemplar of his artistic practice. Their compositional complexity, iconography, and scale epitomise his mature work and, significantly, highlight his important contributions to 20th-century Canadian stained glass.
Keywords
- Christopher Wallis,
- Stained Glass,
- St. Paul's Cathedral
Disciplines
Publication Date
2022
Citation Information
C. Cody Barteet and Katie Oates. "“The Creation of a ‘Transcendental Experience’: Stained Glass by Christopher Wallis for St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Ontario.”" The Journal of Stained Glass Vol. 46 (2022) p. 32 - 44 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/charles-barteet/23/