Patrick Pollen | |
---|---|
Born |
Patrick Laprimaudaye Pollen 12 January 1928 London, United Kingdom |
Died | 30 November 2010 County Wexford, Ireland |
(aged 82)
Nationality | British |
Known for | stained glass design |
Patrick Pollen (12 January 1928 – 30 November 2010) was a British stained-glass artist who spent most of his life working in Ireland.
Patrick La Primaudaye Pollen was born in London on 12 January 1928, the second son and second of six children of Arthur and Daphne Pollen (née Baring). Arthur Pollen was a sculptor of religious works, and grandson of John Hungerford Pollen. Daphne was the daughter of Cecil Baring, 3rd Baron Revelstoke, who purchased Lambay Island and employed Edwin Lutyens to restore the castle there. Daphne was a painter of religious matter. Pollen attended St Philip's preparatory school in South Kensington, then Avisford, near Arundel, and finally Ampleforth College, going on to serve national service. He attended the Slade School of Fine Art for two years to study painting, going on to work at an art school in Paris, Académie Julian.
In 1952 Pollen's father took him to see Evie Hone's Crucifixion and Last Supper window in Eton College Chapel. Upon seeing it he announced "That's what I want to do." He moved to Dublin to study with the stained glass cooperative Evie Hone was a member of, An Túr Gloine, which was run by Catherine O'Brien and she and hone became his mentors. When Hone died in 1955, she left him her brushes.
His early work from the 1950s is mostly in Britain, including a window in a private chapel in the London Oratory, three windows for a chapel at Whitchurch, and a crypt window for Rosslyn Chapel. Pollen worked for two years from 1957 on 32 windows for the new Cathedral of Christ The King, Johannesburg. He made the windows in Dublin, then shipping them to be assembled in South Africa. Pollen created the mosaic of St Joseph the Worker and windows for Galway Cathedral. In 1963 Pollen created a memorial window to Catherine O'Brien in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.