The cartoon is for part of the west window of St Michael and All Angels, Brighton, for which Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., provided an extensive scheme of windows. The lower part of the west window consists of 2 windows, each with 2 lancets, containing full length figures of the 4 Archangels, each pair of lancets having a hexafoil window above. The left hexafoil over the top of Michael and Raphael, shows St Michaesl in combat with the dragon; the right hexafoil, over top of Uriel and Gabriel, an Annunciation scene; high above in the gable is a rose window with central panel of the Virgin and Child surrounded by 7 angels within circles playing on bells.
The present cartoon, which was not used again elsewhere, is an adaptation of a similar design by Morris for a 2-light window in the chancel, south, of F F Bodley’s church, All Saints, Selsley, in Gloucestershire. In the 2-light Sesley window (cartoon 1861, window 1862) the figures of Gabriel and the Virgin are contained in panels set into square, patterned quarries, inscriptions running below each panel,with decorative tracery in the head of the window. The cartoons for the Selsley window were only used on one other occasion (St Stephen’s Parish Church near St Peter Port, Guernsey; top of right and left lancets in west window) and are now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, purchased from Morris & Co. 1940.
The figure of the angel Gabriel in both the Selsley and Brighton panels is an adaptation from Jan van Eyck’s figure of Gabriel.
A drapery study for the figure of the Virgin (by William Morris – S.H.) is in the Sanford L Berger collection, Huntingdon, California. (Illustrated in Sewter, plate 63 – S.H.)
For other cartoons used in this west window of St Michael and All Angels now in the WMG, see the full-length cartoon for the Archangel Raphael (A6) also designed by Morris.
According to extract from account book 1862-1872 , Morris Marshall and Co. were paid £34.10 shillings and 4 pence on October 2nd, 1862; £40. 17 shillings on March 27th, 1863; £34. 19 shillings on August 16th, 1864 (Glass, S. Aisle) for work for Saint Michael and All Angels, Brighton. (S.H. from file document).
Selwyn Image wrote in 1909: ‘ Brighton possesses the finest modern piece of stained glass that has ever been done… for the magnificence of its design the sense which it gave one of being in the presence of supernatural beings, the perfectness of its splendid colouring, and for everything that goes to make a fine stained glass window, this specimen seemed to be perfection.’
