Norman St Clair Carter – Sydney's Stained-Glass Artist and Portrait Painter – From a Melbourne Glass Apprenticeship in the 1890s to the Windows of St Stephen's and St Andrew's Cathedral – 1875 to 1963

Next time you're in St Stephen's on Macquarie Street, or looking up at the high windows in St Andrew's Cathedral, have a look for the name Norman Carter. Most Sydneysiders have never heard of him. Yet from the end of the First World War to the 1950s, few artists put more colour into Sydney's churches, chapels and colleges. He was a Melbourne boy who learnt to cut and paint glass as a teenage apprentice in the 1890s. He was also a portrait painter who painted Barton, Billy Hughes and Henry Lawson and who kept trying for the Archibald Prize without ever winning it. His full name was Norman St Clair Carter, and this is his story.

St John's Uniting Church, Wahroonga. Most of its windows are Norman Carter's, 2019. Image: Collywolly, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Which "Norman St Clair"?

If you go looking for a Sydney stained-glass man called Norman St Clair, you'll find him under his surname, Carter. The Australian Dictionary of Biography lists him as Norman St Clair Carter (1875–1963), "portrait-painter and stained-glass artist". Design and Art Australia Online agrees. As far as I can find, there was no other Norman St Clair in the trade. One thing worth knowing up front is that his training belongs to the 1890s, but nearly all his Sydney windows date from 1916 to the 1950s. If you were picturing a Victorian-era glazier, Carter came along just after them, trained in their workshops.

A Melbourne Apprentice

Carter was born on 30 June 1875 at Kew in Melbourne, the third son of Harold Richard Carter, an English-born grain merchant, and his wife Janet, née Morrow. His older brothers Bryce and Frank both became musicians. Bryce was a well-known cellist and Frank a violinist. Norman was at Melbourne Church of England Grammar School from 1888 to 1890. Then the 1890s depression hit his father's business, and the ADB says he had to leave school and find work.

That's where the glass came in. The ADB says only that from 1890 to 1894 he "was apprenticed to a stained-glass maker". Karla Whitmore's detailed study of his glass, published on Stained Glass Australia, fills in the names from Carter's own unpublished autobiography notes in the State Library of NSW. He started cutting stencils at the Kalizoic, a fashionable Melbourne furnishing and decorating firm. A family friend there, Ernest Tucker, suggested he try an apprenticeship with the stained-glass firm Hughes, Rogers & Co. Its studio was off Lonsdale Street, between Elizabeth and Queen Streets. John Hughes had come out from England to work for Brooks, Robinson & Co. before starting his own partnership. He became Carter's teacher and friend, and Carter learnt by helping in the studio and watching Hughes draw cartoons and paint figures. Another man in that workshop mattered later on. Frederick Tarrant, the head journeyman painter, would one day make Carter's windows in Sydney.

The partnership broke up around 1894 and Hughes went back to England. Carter sold artists' supplies at Ferguson & Mitchell by day. At night he studied at the National Gallery School under Frederick McCubbin and L. Bernard Hall, and later under E. Phillips Fox. Design and Art Australia Online adds that in 1898 he and fellow students Hugh Ramsay and Harley Griffiths rented a shack at Eltham, which they called "The Pillbox", to paint outdoors.

Coming to Sydney

The sources tell his move north a little differently. The ADB and DAAO both say he moved to Sydney in 1903 with his close friend, the poet Hugh McCrae. Whitmore says the family had moved to Sydney in 1897, and that Norman went back to Melbourne to study full-time before settling here for good in 1903. Either way, by 1903 he was a Sydney artist. He set up a city studio, drew for the Bulletin and the Sydney Mail, and joined the Royal Art Society, where he taught until 1916. Whitmore says his first studio was on the corner of George and Market Streets, then in Hunter Street, and later at 76 Pitt Street. The ADB gives Hunter Street and then Vickery's Chambers. He lived at Wollstonecraft, on the lower North Shore.

On 3 November 1908 he married Ruby Eva Burnell at Toowoomba in Queensland. They had two sons and three daughters.

The Portrait Painter

For most of his life Sydney knew Carter as a portrait painter. He reckoned he painted about four hundred portraits. In a 1962 interview recorded by Hazel de Berg for the National Library, he said the trick was to "talk to him, draw him out and get to know him well". One of his first big commissions, Whitmore says, was a portrait of Governor William Bligh for Government House in 1907. His sitters included Sir Edmund Barton, Billy Hughes, Henry Lawson, Hans Heysen, David Scott Mitchell and the art patron Howard Hinton. The ADB's index also lists Sir William Holmes and the aviator P. G. Taylor. His big portrait of the artist Florence Rodway, "A Low Toned Harmony", won a bronze medal at the Paris Salon in 1913, even though Carter never went overseas himself.

He was a regular in the Archibald Prize and never won it. Whitmore quotes him in 1937 saying that after fifteen years of trying he was still hoping. His 1940 entry, the portrait of Captain P. G. Taylor in his flying coat with his Lockheed Altair on the dunes, is now in the Art Gallery of NSW. He didn't think much of modern art. The ADB says he came to see "contemporary art" as a "fungoid growth", and in 1937 he helped found the short-lived Australian Academy of Art.

He taught for decades, at Sydney Technical College from 1915 to 1940 and in the University of Sydney's architecture department from 1922 to 1947. He told people he "always liked teaching" and that it was "useful as a form of ballast to one's income". He also painted murals. Whitmore and DAAO both mention the two 1921 philosophy panels at the University of Sydney, the Rural Bank murals in Martin Place and a 1952 mural for the Maritime Services Board building at Circular Quay, now the Museum of Contemporary Art. They disagree on one detail. Whitmore says the philosophy panels commemorate Professor Francis Anderson. DAAO says Professor John Anderson asked for them in 1921, but John Anderson didn't arrive in Sydney until 1927, so Whitmore's version looks right.

Back to the Glass

Carter never gave up the craft he'd learnt as a boy. Whitmore explains that he both designed and made windows himself, and also designed windows that two Sydney studios made. The first was his old workmate Frederick Tarrant, whose studio was at 24 Taylor Street, Darlinghurst, until the firm went bankrupt in 1928. The second was P. O. (Percy) Barnard's Standard Glass Studio at 183 Parramatta Road, Strathfield, which ran for more than thirty years from around 1930. Carter's own description of the work, from his notes, was "a kind of work which is full of possibilities and varying problems". He said working in two mediums was like speaking "two different languages. One has to learn the idiom of each".

His earliest known windows are in the old Neutral Bay Presbyterian Church, now St John's Uniting. Two lancets beside the altar are signed "Designed by Norman St Carter" (the "Clair" got lost somewhere) and "Painted by F.J. Tarrant, Darlinghurst 1917". They remember Captain Robert Craig, a long-serving elder, and his wife, with a Viking ship riding rough seas and calm.

The Uniting Church in Yeo Street, Neutral Bay, home of Carter's earliest known windows (1917). Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

Windows for the Fallen

The First World War made him busy. Grieving families and schools wanted memorial windows, and Carter's figures of saints, knights and soldiers suited the mood. At Shore chapel in North Sydney, his friend the architect B. J. Waterhouse got him the job of designing the whole scheme. That's nine two-light windows from about 1918. One shows Captain Brian Pockley, a young doctor, as St Luke. Whitmore's article says he was killed at Gallipoli in 1915. Most accounts of Pockley, though, have him dying at Bita Paka in German New Guinea in September 1914, one of the first Australian officers killed in the war.

At The King's School chapel in Parramatta there are windows from about 1916 to 1948. They run from his early triple lancet for Stewart Milson, with Old Boys marching beneath Christ, to the seven Second World War windows in the apse showing St Michael, St George and King Arthur. Whitmore says the use of legendary heroes instead of biblical figures caused a stir at the time. At Wesley College at the University of Sydney there are 1919 windows for George Guthrie, killed at Pozières, and Captain Edward Dawson, killed at Lone Pine.

In the city, a memorial window at the Congregational Church in Pitt Street, now Pitt Street Uniting, was unveiled in 1922. It shows Christ with a kneeling soldier in armour.

Pitt Street Uniting Church, formerly the Congregational Church, with Carter's 1922 war memorial window in the southern gallery. Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

Sydney's Churches, 1920s and 30s

From there the commissions came steadily. Whitmore lists the east window at Christ Church, Queanbeyan (1923), and two windows at St James', Pitt Town (1928), both made by Tarrant. There's a big three-light window at St Andrew's, Longueville (1928). In 1930 he did the half-round window over the entrance of St James' Church, King Street. It shows James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and their mother around Jesus. At the Garden Island naval chapel he did a 1936 memorial window with HMAS Sydney under a huge Britannia, and a 1935 window of Christ walking on the waves.

St James' Church, King Street. Carter's 1930 window is over the entrance. Image: Ymblanter, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

St James' Church, Pitt Town, with two Carter windows made by Tarrant in 1928. Image: Mfunnell, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The Naval Chapel on Garden Island, where Carter's 1935 and 1936 windows are. Image: Peter Ellis, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Inside the Garden Island Naval Chapel. Image: Peter Ellis, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The church with the most Carter glass is St John's at Wahroonga. The big three-light window over the altar was in place when the church opened in 1930. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that it was "designed by Norman Carter, and carried out under his supervision", and it's signed "painted by Tarrants". Over the next twenty years most of the other windows followed. They include memorials from both wars, with Gideon, Ezekiel and Isaiah, and the last one, to the donor, from about 1951.

Inside St John's, Wahroonga, looking to the altar window Carter designed for the church's opening in 1930. Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The nave at St John's, Wahroonga, lined with Carter windows from the 1930s to the 1950s. Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The earlier Presbyterian church at Wahroonga, before the present St John's was built, by William Henry Broadhurst. Image: Broadhurst, William Henry, 1855-1927, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

At the Presbyterian church in Drummoyne he did something different, a history window. Shown at the Society of Artists in 1931, it shows the signing of the Scottish Covenant, with a family in tartan in the side lights, and was made by Percy Barnard. The window opposite remembers Captain Harold Henley, killed at Pozières in 1916. It was unveiled in 1932 by his parents, Sir Thomas and Lady Henley.

Drummoyne Presbyterian Church, with Carter's Covenant window (1931) and Henley memorial (1932). Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Drummoyne Presbyterian Church in the early 1900s, by William Henry Broadhurst. Image: Broadhurst, William Henry, 1855-1927, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

His Biggest Window: St Stephen's

Carter's largest window is in St Stephen's Uniting Church on Macquarie Street, which opened in 1935. The seven-light altar window, known as the Armstrong window, dates from 1936. It was designed by Carter and made by Barnard's Standard Glass Studio. Christ stands between Faith and Hope, with Moses, David, St Stephen and St Paul among the figures on either side. There are angels, a rainbow, the burning bush and the Presbyterian shield above and below. Whitmore says the side windows, dated 1936 to 1954, and a staircase window showing Iona and the Flynn Memorial Church in Alice Springs, with Sturt's desert pea, also look like his work.

The front of St Stephen's Uniting Church, Macquarie Street. Inside is Carter's largest window, the 1936 Armstrong window. Image: Rangasyd, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Cathedrals

At All Saints' Cathedral in Bathurst, the Melbourne artist William Montgomery died in 1927 before he could finish the "Heroes" windows in the Warriors' Chapel, and Carter completed the set. They pair St Paul with Cranmer, Florence Nightingale with Edith Cavell, and Captain Cook with the explorers who crossed the Blue Mountains, complete with swag, axe, dog, Christmas bells and waratahs. Carter oversaw the installation in early 1930 and went to the dedication. At St Saviour's Cathedral in Goulburn he did "Suffer the children" in 1942 and two windows on the history of the English Bible in 1944.

Inside St Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn, where Carter's windows of 1942 and 1944 are. Image: JohnArmagh, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

In Sydney the big job was the clerestory at St Andrew's Cathedral. Whitmore says eight three-light windows went in, starting with two in 1945 and finishing in 1956 with one that replaced an Ashwin & Falconer window. Their subjects include the first church service in the colony, with the Rev Richard Johnson preaching before Governor Phillip under a rainbow and waratahs. Others cover mission work in New Guinea, Norfolk Island and Tanganyika, and Bishop Broughton's centenary. Some guides date the clerestory to 1953–54, but Whitmore, working from Carter's papers and newspaper reports, gives 1945 to 1956.

Stained glass at St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, where Carter designed eight clerestory windows between 1945 and 1956. Image: -wuppertaler, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

Light through the windows of St Andrew's Cathedral. Image: Radosław Botev, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0 pl).

His final war memorial window, Whitmore says, went into St Luke's, Dapto, in 1954. He also did two big windows for St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Canberra (1948 and 1950), and windows at Berry, Guyra, Narromine, Bathurst Presbyterian, Armidale's Teachers' College and the chapel at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

The Last Years

Carter kept working into the 1950s. He died at Gordon on 18 September 1963, aged 88, and was buried in the Anglican section of the Northern Suburbs cemetery. Ruby had died before him. The ADB says his estate was sworn for probate at £2337, not much for a man who'd painted prime ministers. A self-portrait is in the Art Gallery of NSW.

His view of art was simple. "Good art", he said in 1939, "must be such that ordinary people can take an intelligent pleasure in it." His portraits mostly hang in boardrooms and galleries most of us never visit. His windows are in local churches, open on a Sunday, and that's where you'll find his best work.

References

• Australian Dictionary of Biography, "Carter, Norman St Clair (1875–1963)" and its life summary.
• Design and Art Australia Online, "Norman St Clair Carter" biography.
• Karla Whitmore, "Artist on Canvas and Glass: the Stained Glass Work of Norman Carter", Stained Glass Australia (2017). It draws on Carter's papers and autobiography notes in the State Library of NSW (MLMSS 471) and on reports in Trove newspapers.
• Art Gallery of NSW, Archibald Prize 1940, Norman Carter, "Captain PG Taylor, EGM, MC".
• State Library of NSW, Norman Carter self-portrait.