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Louis Comfort Tiffany revolutionized the art of stained glass windows in late nineteenth-century America and led America to the forefront of this art form. His relentless pursuit of a brilliant range of colour meant endless experiments with adding metal oxides to the basic glass and manipulating and layering the finished product to produce just the right effect in a completed window.
From 1875 Tiffany experimented with stained-glass techniques. Disappointed by the poor quality of American glass, he set out to develop a technique to imitate and surpass the brilliant colour effects achieved by medieval stained-glass artists. His earliest glass was made exclusively for windows, which were incorporated into interior design schemes. In these windows, which were either geometric patterns or depictions of landscapes, Tiffany used metallic oxides to develop numerous colour gradations, while experimenting with various effects to create the appearance of wrinkled and folded surfaces. This was particularly effective to convey the rippled effect of water or clouds.
The windows shown here were produced in the Tiffany Studios. Originally made in 1905 for the Universalist Church of Our Father in Brooklyn, the windows were purchased by the All Souls Universalist Church in Brooklyn and installed in its sanctuary in 1945, where they remained until they came to the Brooklyn Museum.
On the one hand, the windows are realistic representations of two sylvan landscapes, using the inherent properties of translucent coloured glass to capture the subtle effects of changing light at dawn and dusk. On the other hand, in depicting a springtime wood at sunrise and an autumn wood at sunset, they also constitute an allegory of life and the passage of time.
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