The Wick Window

Photo – Peter Swanson

1956 – The Little Sanctuary, Saint Albans School, Washington, DC

This is the first window Rowan and Irene created for this beautiful little chapel. It has a wonderful moodiness to it and a really nice balance of darks and lights. The glass is exceptional, and the wide leading adds another design dimension. Irene apparently gets the credit for all these attributes, because we learn from the school’s brochure about the windows that “Irene cut and chose the glass for this window which is particularly beautiful in texture as well as design. She also did all the leading using particularly wide lead, half inch lead.” Rowan’s painting is very minimal: just a few stars, with no crosshatching at all to control the light. The glass tells the story here. Also of note is the thin border around this window, which is not done in Rowan’s usual style and has the signatures embedded in it.

Iconography

The school has a wonderful brochure about the windows in this chapel by Allie Benson and Lynne Mitchell. The brochure tells us that “John Wick died when his plane plunged into the ocean during a military training flight. Rowan and Irene LeCompte drew inspiration for this window from a quotation of William Blake,

The starry floor,

The wat’ry shore,

Is giv’n thee till the break of day.

In LeCompte’s recollection, ‘We designed a window that, in its lower part, showed the rolling motion of billowing and turbulent waves and, in the sky above, stars and a crescent moon. The moon and stars reflect in the water suggesting sparkly creatures of every shape and hue which live in the ocean.’”