Corpus of Percy Bacon

The Corpus of Percy Bacon & Brothers

Mickleham, St Michael & All Angels

Surrey

St Michael & All Angels, Mickleham, Surrey.
Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me: Percy Bacon 1892

Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me. Forbid them Not: 1894.

The one Bacon window in St Michael's, Mickleham is one of the earliest of his work, dating from 1893/4¹, and not long after he had set up his business supplying stained glass. It is a subscription window, the moving spirit behind the project being Mr. J. H. Bryant of Juniper Hill, Mickleham.² The subject is Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me, a theme (and cartoon) Bacon would return to regularly throught his career.

The style is typical, showing how rigorously Bacon had pre-defined his style even before setting up his firm, a style he maintained throughout his life. Here is a scene within elaborate canopies and wide columns which frame the whole across the three lights, and big block of blue glass for sky. Behind the main characters, an idealised landscape of cultivated groves, hills, towns and isolated buildings expands to the horizon. Not surprisingly for such an early work, the figurative painting is not as refined, or detailed as his later work, and although a good attempt has been made at perspective, the finish is a little flat. Nonetheless it is clear that Bacon set high standards as the glasswork is very good, and despite the passage of time the colours are still vibrant. It is worth spending a little time on the detail in the background; the turreted buildings in the town, and those behind the two apostles in the far distance, the fence running along a field edge and the trees and bushes, which on the face of it lend little of consequence to the scene, but are still included. The cartoon of the figures was reused at St Wynstan's, Repton (Derbyshire) in a window of 1904, and also in St Wenn (Cornwall), and Haverhill (Suffolk).

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The Builder Vol 66 20 January 1894, p59.
The Guardian, 10 Jan 1894, p7.

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NGR: TQ 17076 53378
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