The Art Nouveau style of the 1890s and 1900s, although applied successfully to such major art forms as architecture, sculpture, and painting, was, nevertheless, essentially a decorative art. Interior decoration was a primary concern to its practitioners, and stained glass was an indispensable adjunct of interior decoration at that time, secular as well as ecclesiastic.
In the turn-of-the-century portfolio Bunte Verglasungen [Colorful Stained-Glass Windows], reproduced in the present volume, Julius Hoffmann of Stuttgart, a specialist in publications for the use of practicing artists and designers, gathered together twenty-four plates by artists of several nations containing scores of original designs for Art Nouveau glass windows (it has been necessary to reduce many of them here). The original portfolio identified the nine contributing artists merely by their surnames and the initials of their given names (possibly because they were so well known at the time). Research undertaken for the present edition has provided the following biographical data, which clearly shows that these were designers of true eminence in their profession:
R. Bacard (pages 66, 67, 71): very likely the French painter Raoul Bacard, who exhibited at Parisian salons in the 1930s.
Rene Beauclair (pages 62, 75, and 76): a painter who exhibited in Paris in 1910 and contributed designs to other Julius Hoffmann portfolios around 1900.
George Montague Ellwood (pages 47–50, 61, 86, 87): English, born 1875; an architect and interior decorator for many fine country homes and town houses, as well as a creator of posters and other commercial art.
Rudolf Geyling (pages 52–55, 72, 73, 79, 80): Austrian, 1839–1904 [since there is no indication in the original portfolio that Geyling was dead, the publication probably appeared before 1904]; descendant of a long line of Viennese artists, he was the director of his family’s stained-glass workshop, the Glasmalerei von Carl Heyling’s Erben, and himself designed windows for churches in many parts of Austria.
Josef Goller (pages 88–90): a general graphic artist, chiefly active in Dresden, who did interior decoration, including stained-glass designs.
M. J. Gradl (pages 51, 56–60, 63, 64, 70, 84, 85): general editor of the portfolio; no other information available.
Rudolf Rochga (page 83): German, born 1875; a pupil of the renowned painter Franz Stuck, he was an easel painter and a commercial artist and taught at the School of Applied Art in Stuttgart.
A. Waldraff (page 65): no information available.