St John's and King's Park Church, Dalkeith
I spent yesterday morning in St John's and King's Park Church, Dalkeith, carrying out a survey of four William Wilson windows. The windows consist of two paired lancets approximately 0.5m x 3m each in size, set in sandstone rebates. Three of the four windows consists of scenes from the life of Jesus, capped by the emblem of the Four Evangelists (the Luke window appears to only depict one event). Small graphical motifs link each of the signs, and the scenes broadly outline the chronology of Jesus’ life when is read from L-R (e.g. Matthew and Mark, Luke and John) and from bottom to top.
Scenes depicted in the windows are as follows (from bottom to top):
Matthew: Adoration of the Magi, Finding in the Temple
Mark: Baptism in the River Jordan, Transfiguration of Christ
Luke: Agony in the Garden.
John: Crucifixion, Ascension
The windows were gifted to the church by Church Elder Peter J Lyle, the dedication plaque and signatures on two of the windows indicating a date of 1939, two years after Wilson returned from London and started his own Edinburgh studio.
The following description (Moody, 2006) indicates that the windows, which had been warmly received by critics and parishioners alike, were considered to be adventurous for the time.
“They have a distinctive character… in which there is suggested a certain amount of Persian character in richness and method of working out the colour arrangements. The use of detached colour notes gives a jewel-like character to the design, suggesting not so much areas of colour in class as a composition from jewel-like elements…
Bars of blue are introduced in an area of some other colour; and by way of counterpoise bars of the other colour are taken through an area of blue.
One pair of the windows, for example, dealing with the later and more intense episodes of the life of Christ predominate in red, which gives an effect of passion, intensity, and deep spiritual tension.
”