Photograph of the 2013 installation of the exhibition at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.

Clara Weaver Parrish: Stained-Glass Windows in Central Alabama Churches

Featuring In Company with Angels from Tiffany Studios

January 19 through March 17, 2013

On view in the Atrium, Blackmon, and Weil Galleries

Overview

The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts’ collection holds thirteen oils, drawings, and pastels by Selma-native Clara Weaver Parrish (1861–1925). An artist who studied and exhibited internationally, during her long and prominent art career in New York City, Parrish produced several designs for impressive stained glass windows that were fabricated by Tiffany Studios and the Montague Castle London Co. for central Alabama churches. This exhibition featured Parrish’s original designs for these and other windows, plus modern photographs of her windows in St. Paul’s Episcopal and First Baptist churches, both in Selma. The installation was organized to complement the installation of In Company With Angels, angel-themed windows by Tiffany Studios on view in an adjacent gallery.

In Company with Angels

In 1902 Louis Comfort Tiffany created seven eight-foot-tall, stained-glass windows for a Swedenborgian church in Cincinnati. When the church was demolished in 1964, the windows were saved and subsequently restored. Each window features an angel that represents a passage from the Bible’s Book of Revelation. The windows utilize a rich and varied palette of Tiffany’s opalescent, drapery, rolled, textured, antique, and flashed glass. While the faces and flesh of the angels were painted by hand, the rest of the windows are plated through an innovative technique of layered glass that imparts great depth to the imagery. Within the exhibition, the windows, in combination with reproductions of selected historical documents and a documentary video of the window’s conservation treatment, weave together art, history, and spirituality.

Above: Photograph of the 2013 installation of the exhibition at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.

Organizer

Organized by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama. In Company with Angels was organized by In Company with Angels, Inc.

Sponsor

This exhibition was sponsored in part by Montgomery by Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama, LLC; The James W. Wilson, Jr. and Wynona W. Wilson Family Foundation; AlaTrust; River Bank & Trust; and Burke Schloss.

Scroll to Top