Analysis: In 1927 the Irish government commissioned a stained glass window from Harry Clarke, but it was never displayed. What went wrong?
By John Gibney, Royal Irish Academy
Harry Clarke (1889-1931) is easily one of Ireland’s finest visual artists, best known for his extraordinary and intricate work in stained glass. It is nothing unusual for an artist’s works to be posthumously scattered across collections throughout the world, and Clarke is no exception. One of his finest works – the so-called ‘Geneva window’, completed soon before his death– resides in the Wolfsonian Museum in Florida. But the story of the Geneva window is not the story of how it ended up in Florida; rather, it is of how it never got to Geneva in the first place.
That story began in September 1923, when the Irish Free State joined the League of Nations, the multinational body created in the aftermath of the First World War to ensure that there would not be a second one. Alongside its political purpose, the League was also tasked with regulating a wide range of humanitarian and social issues, and one of the institutions under its jurisdiction was the International Labour Organization (ILO) which was, like the League itself, based in Geneva.
As the Irish Free State became more involved in the League, the idea of presenting a gift to the ILO for display in its headquarters arose as a cost-effective way of giving the new state some additional international prominence. Many other countries had done so, and in February 1927 W.T. Cosgrave’s Cumann na nGaedhal government formally invited Harry Clarke to create a bespoke stained-glass window for the ILO. It was to be completed in March 1928, but Clarke’s increasing ill-health and pressure of work delayed its completion until late 1930, at which point problems emerged.
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From RTÉ lyric fm's Lorcan Murray's Classic Drive, the eternal light of Harry Clarke
The government had insisted on inspecting the completed window which, as suggested by Clarke, consisted of eight panels with vignettes depicting works by fifteen contemporary Irish writers: Padraic Colum, George Fitzmaurice, Augusta Gregory, James Joyce, Seán O’Casey, Liam O’Flaherty, Seamus O’Kelly, Seumas O’Sullivan, Patrick Pearse, Lennox Robinson, George Russell ('Æ'), George Bernard Shaw, James Stephens, John Millington Synge, and W.B. Yeats. But in September 1930 Cosgrave told Clarke that the window, in its current form, was not suitable as a gift being made on behalf of the government.
While it was ‘a most remarkable and successful artistic achievement’, wrote Cosgrave, ‘you will appreciate that my difficulty has nothing to do with the artistic merit of the panels; it arises from the fact that the inclusion of scenes from certain authors as representative of Irish literature and culture would give grave offence to many of our people.’ The panel depicting Liam O’Flaherty’s 1926 novel Mr Gilhooley was singled out by Cosgrave, who suggested it be be replaced. Clarke was willing to consider this but died of tuberculosis in Switzerland in January 1931 before the window could be amended.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Arena, co-editor of 'Harry Clarke and Artistic Visions of the New Irish State' Róisín Kennedy
What went wrong? It seems that Clarke had altered some of his original designs and that circumstances had changed; the panels depicting the works of O’Sullivan and especially O’Flaherty (which featured a nude, albeit veiled, dancer) were singled out as being problematic. The overt sensuality of these panels seemed to speak for themselves, but O’Flaherty’s increasingly critical perspective on independent Ireland was also an issue; his bitingly satirical 'A tourists guide to Ireland' had been published in 1929. Even though the window was not intended for an Irish audience Cosgrave and his government feared a public backlash if it was presented as a gift from the state.
Given the vocal and moralistic conservatism to be found in some quarters of Irish society, this may not have been unfounded; in early 1931 there were waspish mutterings about the 'Genevan Window' in the pages of the Catholic Bulletin. But there were more appreciative views as well. Pending a final decision on its future, the window had been erected in Government Buildings for inspection (where it was slightly damaged).
One of those to view it there was Michael Fogarty, the Catholic archbishop of Killaloe, who was reportedly ‘very much impressed by the work, and was of opinion that no real exception could be taken to any part of it’ apart from the O’Sullivan vignette. That said, Fogarty ‘recognised that it would be very difficult to make an effective change, and for that reason he would be in favour of presenting the window as it stood. He thought it a wonderful example of stained glass art, and thought that it would make a tremendous impression’.
That one of Clarke’s major clients was the Catholic Church may well have shaped Fogarty’s appreciation. But ultimately, the Cosgrave government’s fears of adverse public opinion (not to mention their own views of the window’s contents) prevailed, and it was decided not to send it to Geneva. In 1933 it was sold back to Clarke’s widow, the artist Margaret Clarke (neé Crilly). The government insisted on recouping what they had originally paid for it: £450.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's, Morning Ireland, part of Harry Clarke's Geneva Window returns home to Hugh Lane Gallery
While the entire ‘Geneva window’ is in Florida, the original panel depicting Mr Gilhooley is on display in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery; it cracked during the final production and had to be replaced, but Clarke repaired and retained the first version.
The unedifying tale of the effective suppression of his ‘Geneva Window’ obviously points towards the censorious official climate of post-independence Ireland, and the conservatism that went hand in hand with it. But the very existence of the window, and the selection of its subject matter, points towards the cosmopolitan creativity of another strand within Irish society; one that could be grist to the mill of the other, but which was no less real for that.
John Gibney is Assistant Editor with the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy programme and is the co-author (with Michael Kennedy and Zoë Reid) of 'On an equal footing with all: Ireland at the League of Nations, 1923-1946' (Dublin, 2023).
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
