Helen Maitland Armstrong was an American stained glass artist who worked both solo and in partnership with her father, Maitland Armstrong.
Background
Helen Maitland Armstrong was born in 1869 in Florence, Italy, to American diplomat and stained glass artist Maitland Armstrong and his wife Helen, who was a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant and a niece of the politician Hamilton Fish. In 1878, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who was a friend of her father"s, created a bronze portrait plaque of her from a photograph. She studied at the Art Students League of New York but received much of her artistic training from her father, who made her a junior partner in his firm of Maitland Armstrong & Company
Education
Studied art at Art Students’ League, New York, and with Rhoda Holmes Nicholls, Irving R. Wiles, William M.
Career
Her work is considered among the finest produced in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her six siblings included book designer and author Margaret Neilson Armstrong and magazine editor Hamilton Fish Armstrong. Armstrong"s oeuvre centers on stained glass windows for churches but also includes mosaics, murals, and illustrations.
Her earliest work dates from the 1890s.
In 1893, a cartoon for one of her stained glass windows was shown in the Women"s Building at the World"s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Armstrong"s solo work—which the New York Times termed "exceptional"—included stained glass window designs for dozens of churches and chapels, as well as a government building and several private residences.
She designed 16 windows using a 15th-century painted-glass technique for a private mausoleum for Alva Belmont in Woodlawn Cemetery. One of her windows for Saint Andrew"s Dune Church in Southampton, New York, was blown out by the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 and found intact afterwards half a mile away.
Depicting the glorification of God, it is the focal point of the interior.
Above it is a mural showing the Lamb of God, and beneath it is a stone reredos by Tiffany with other Christian symbols such as the peacock (symbolizing resurrection). Armstrong also illustrated a number of books for the publisher A.C. (before Christ) McClurg. Armstrong died in the house where she was raised at 58 West. 10th Saint in New York City on November 26, 1948.
The Metropolitan Museum in New York holds a collection of her drawings and watercolors for stained glass windows as well as designs for an altarpiece and a mural.
Christ"s Church (Marlborough, New York)
Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help (Bernardsville, New Jersey)
City Hall (Paterson, New Jersey)
Sailors’ Snug Harbor Chapel (Staten Island, New York)
Saint Andrew"s Dune Church (Southampton, New York)
Saint John"s Church (Williamstown, Massachusetts)
Trinity Church (Newport, Rhode Island)
Unitarian Church (Washington, District of Columbia).