Evie Hone Stained Glass

Although there are examples of Evie Hone’s pictures in galleries including the National Gallery of Ireland, the Hugh Lane Gallery, and the Tate Gallery, she and Mainie Jellett are not widely known as artists outside Ireland.

But Evie Hone is known internationally for her stained glass.

“This is a cartoon for Hone’s magnum opus, the East Window at Eton College Chapel, designed to replace the window destroyed during World War II. The lower register features the Last Supper, flanked on one side by the figure of Melchizedek and on the other a depiction of the Sacrifice of Isaac. Meanwhile, the upper register is dominated by the Crucifixion, but also includes symbols of the Resurrection and Christ’s miracles. The scale of this study, one inch to a foot, indicates the magnitude of Hone’s undertaking. The window itself covers an area of almost 1,300 square feet. Hone worked meticulously on this colossal project between 1949 and 1952, producing several versions of particular sections of glass until she was satisfied with the result. Today the window is widely considered to be a masterpiece of modern stained-glass art. On seeing the window in 1952, artist Daphne Pollen wrote: ‘We were staggered by this great work. Its colour, design and drawing so powerful and so much better than we could have expected . . . its great depth of religious feeling dominates the whole chapel . . . ‘ Pollen’s response was echoed by Eton’s Head Master, who wrote to Hone that ‘the window is absolutely magnificent. I was particularly pleased by the excitement and delight of the boys.’ Hone’s achievement exemplifies the more general sentiments expressed by Elizabeth Rivers in 1959: ‘Evie Hone worked with a whole-hearted and simple-minded effort to synthesise the demands of vision with those of technique; to create timeless images in terms of modern expression’.” (NGI)

Evie Hone’s second most famous work is My Four Green Fields.

“This cartoon corresponds to a commission awarded to Evie Hone by the Department of Industry and Commerce to design a window for the Irish Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The dynamic employment of shapes and bold colour point to the artist’s early Cubist training. Visible among the loosely described forms are the emblems of the four provinces of Ireland. In 1960, the finished window was installed in the Head Office of CIE on O’Connell Street, Dublin, before being finally installed in Government Buildings in 1991.” (NGI)

The stained glass in the exhibition is lit to perfection unlike her windows in real life. I remember when the BBC were filming a Service from Eton College Chapel, her window was back-lit by huge arc lights. I have seen a fair few of her windows and they are seldom lit to best advantage – a hazard of the art form.