This 1897 stained-glass window, depicting the Adoration of the Magi, is among the earliest independent works by Herbert William Bryans, produced shortly after his departure from the workshop of Charles Eamer Kempe. It marks a significant moment in Bryans’s career, when he began to articulate a personal idiom within the broader Arts and Crafts movement.

Although Bryans had been deeply shaped by his experience at Kempe’s firm—particularly in his command of medievalising detail and disciplined figure drawing—this window already demonstrates a conscious move away from Kempe’s highly ornamental, pattern-driven aesthetic. The figures are more solidly modelled and spatially grounded, with a quieter, more contemplative mood. Drapery is treated with broad, sculptural folds rather than intricate surface patterning, and the faces display a restrained emotional realism characteristic of Bryans’s mature style.

The composition is carefully balanced across the paired lights. The Virgin and Child form a calm, luminous focus, their pale flesh tones and softly modulated whites standing out against the darker landscape setting. The Magi are differentiated not only by costume and gesture but by subtle variations in colour and texture, creating a sense of narrative progression as each approaches in turn. Bryans’s handling of colour is notably controlled: rich reds, greens, and golds are tempered by extensive use of silvery whites and muted blues, lending the scene both dignity and clarity.

Technically, the window shows Bryans’s early confidence in glass-painting. Shading is economical yet expressive, relying on line and selective matting rather than heavy enamel work. The architectural canopies and lower decorative panels retain echoes of Kempe’s workshop vocabulary, but they are simplified and subordinated to the figural scene, signalling Bryans’s intention to place narrative and symbolism above ornamental display.

As an early independent commission, this window is important not only for its quality but for what it reveals about Bryans’s artistic direction. It establishes many of the qualities that would define his later work: a measured approach to medieval precedent, a preference for clarity and legibility, and a devotional tone that is introspective rather than theatrical. In this sense, the 1897 Adoration stands as both a point of departure from Kempe and a confident statement of Bryans’s own artistic identity.