Jane Gray (b.1931)

Gatton Church, nr Redhill, Surrey, Design for Stained Glass Window (1979)

Watercolour

15.5 x 8.5 cm

Dated, detailed in artist’s hand and studio label verso.

A church has existed in this Surrey parish since the Doomsday Survey in 1086 but the present Church dates back to the 13th century, undergoing extensive alterations in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Notably, in 1834, the pulpit and altar, bought from Nuremberg, were hopefully attributed to Albrecht Dürer; the carved doors had travelled from Rouen; the presbytery stalls from a disestablished monastery in Ghent, the altar rails from Tongeren; and the stained glass for the windows, and the wainscoting of the nave and carved canopies had come from Aarschot, near Leuven. This tiny church window was one of Gray’s smallest commissions. Her brief was to include the church at the heart of the Gatton agricultural community, and she did, supplementing this with illustrations of corn, oats, barley, poppies, bees, butterflies, ladybirds, a caterpillar and a grasshopper, alongside small roundels set amongst these containing a calf, a tractor, and a combine harvester respectively. The window was installed in 1980.

Provenance: the artist’s studio sale.

Literature: Jane Gray, Playing with Rainbows. (Shropshire: Ellingham Press, 2011), pp.41, 76.

Condition: very good.

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