Henry Payne (artist) - Stained Glass and Painting

Stained Glass and Painting

From at least 1904 onwards he established an independent business designing and manufacturing stained glass, producing large and notable works for churches such as E. S. Prior's St. Andrew’s, Roker, St Martins, Kensal Rise, St Mary's, Madresfield and J. L. Pearson's St Alban's, Bordesley.

In common with most of the Birmingham Group he worked across a wide variety of media, producing book illustrations for the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft and interior decoration for the Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts. Although most prolific in stained glass, Payne's most notable achievements were arguably in the field of decorative painting. Between 1902 and 1923 he worked on the wall paintings of the chapel at Madresfield Court near Malvern in Worcestershire. Painted as fresco in tempera and sitting alongside work by other figures of the Birmingham Arts and Crafts movement such as William Bidlake, Georgie Gaskin and Charles March Gere, Madresfield Court is "not only Payne's most important scheme of decorative painting, but probably the most famous of all such Arts and Crafts schemes".

• West Window, Hook Church: The "Good Shepherd" window by Henry Payne. A mix of a typical English country scene, with lambs and a stream, but with lions behind the wicker fence and a biblical king complete with what appears to be a zither.

• Choosing the Red and White Roses (c. 1908), Pen and watercolor, gouache, gold-leaf and oil.

In 1908 he was commissioned to produce a wall painting for the later stages of the decoration of the Palace of Westminster. His work The Plucking of the Red and White Roses in the Temple Garden - an allegory on the Wars of the Roses - now hangs in the Palace's East Corridor.

Payne also painted landscapes in watercolour, exhibiting at the Royal Academy from 1899 to 1935 and being elected a member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1920.