Design for landscape window, Memorial to Emily F. Northrop

Although the window is unsigned, the fact that it was a suggestion for a window for Emily Fairchild Northrop, Agnes Northrop’s mother, combined with the knowledge that landscape designs such as this were the particular province of Northrop’s work, leave no doubt as to its authorship. Northrop began with Tiffany in the mid-1880s and worked there throughout her entire career until the studios closed in the early 1930s. Tiffany relied heavily on Northrop’s facility in drawing landscapes and gardens that would be then incorporated into his studios’ window designs, including the Metropolitan’s own Autumn Landscape window that graces the entrance to the Charles Engelhard Court in the American Wing.


This drawing, therefore, not only helps to significantly flesh out Northrop’s important role, but also contributes to our understanding of the role that women played in the design and execution of work from the Tiffany Studios. The composition is essentially the standard landscape design much favored by Tiffany Studios for landscape memorial windows—the river meandering through a mountain valley thought to be suggestive of the deceased passage of life. Here, the landscape is flanked by birch and pine trees with golden rod and red asters in the foreground, perhaps favorite flowers of the deceased. Three sheep graze peacefully on the green hillside. This is a sunset view, showing the brilliant coloring of the sky, from bright yellow, through orange, pink, violet, and ultimately a dark blue.


This drawing is especially poignant because, as the inscription indicates, it was intended as a memorial to the artist’s mother, who died in 1916. Northrop had already designed a window memorializing her father in 1903, which was fabricated by the Tiffany Studios and installed in the Bowne Street Community Church (Reformed Dutch Church) in Flushing, where the family worshipped and where Northrop’s grandfather had been pastor. Unfortunately, it appears that the window destined to memorialize her mother was never executed. It would presumably also have been intended for the Reformed Church, Flushing, but no such window is there. As such, then, it makes the drawing even more significant in that it is the only record of the window.