Reverse Glass Painting: A Unique Artistic Tradition

Known as verre églomisé in French and Hinterglasmalerei in German, the intricate art of reverse glass painting has a diverse oeuvre with a global appeal. From ancient religious and mythological scenes to Chinese decorative panels, portraiture, and modern expressions by Wassily Kandinsky, reverse glass painting has captivated art lovers worldwide.

The art of reverse glass painting is a labor of love. It requires an artist to paint onto glass in reverse order, adding final details first and background elements last to produce a luminous and striking effect that can add depth to a painting. Dating back to Italy between the 13th to 16th centuries, small panels of glass with designs formed by engraved gilding were first applied to reliquaries and portable altars.

Used for sacral paintings since the Middle Ages, before being adopted by a diverse range of artists including Thomas Gainsborough and Wassily Kandinsky, reverse glass painting has had a broad influence on art. Favored by the church and nobility throughout Europe since the 18th century, reverse glass painting found popularity in folk art in Austria, Bavaria, and Bohemia, and then by Kandinsky, who used the technique to capture ideas while working on the almanac Der Blaue Reiter.

Not confined to the West, Jesuit missionaries brought the artform to China and it spread to Japan during the Edo period, and on to India where it became a popular artform in the 18th and 19th centuries, often depicting mythological and religious scenes. Its distinctive under glass effect can make images appear luminous and add depth to a technique often associated with religious icons, decorative art, and folk traditions, but contemporary artists have also embraced it to create modern interpretations of this artistic tradition.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

Initially using the technique to help him visualize his ideas, Kandinsky’s glass paintings proved so popular that in 1966 the Guggenheim hosted an exhibition called, Vasily Kandinsky: Painting on Glass, which celebrated the artist and his works on glass.

It all started for Kandinsky with a visit to the small Bavarian village of Murnau in 1909, where they still practiced the 18th-century tradition of painting saints or religious scenes on glass. And in the following years his work on glass shared this use of bright colors, flat patterns, and naive expressions. His painting of Santa Francisca shows this influence with a similarity to a Tyrolean painting on glass that Kandinsky owned, while his St. Vladimir glass painting resembles a Russian icon. 

Kandinsky learned the traditional folk technique of applying details first, followed by flat colors, and a final coating of silver or quicksilver. This technique was applied to his All Saints Day series, which featured religious motifs and a crucified Christ, while in the glass painting, Last Judgement (1912) flowing black lines are interpreted as angels in what was hailed as his first fully abstract work. It proved to be an important piece for Kandinsky that shared similarities with the oil painting, Study For Composition 7, one of his major pre-World War I works.

The works on glass, Fantastic Bird And Black Panther and Small Pleasures both feature religious and symbolic motifs that contrast with each other on either side of the painting, and offer an insight into the artist’s fascination with religious symbolism. “Everything starts with a dot,” Kandinsky once said and that was certainly the case with his reverse glass paintings, which acted as forerunners to his non-objective paintings on canvas. 

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)

Turning the basic concept of viewing a painting from the front on its head, Thomas Gainsborough’s Wooded Moonlight Landscape with Pool and Figure at the Door of a Cottage looks at art in a whole new light. And, for that matter, in a whole new direction too. Painted on sheet glass, this was one of 10 reverse glass paintings created by the revered English artist between 1781 and 1786.

The paintings were backlit and meant to be viewed from the unpainted side in a showbox designed by Gainsborough that was illuminated by five candles. Inspired by Philippe de Loutherbourg’s mechanical theatre, Eidophusikon, which gave representations of dramatic and illusionistic scenes painted on paper, Gainsborough was drawn to create his own.

This allowed the viewer to look inside the box and see the backlit transparency. Because of this new approach, Gainsborough used a sgraffito technique, scraping away the paint to reveal bright highlights to exaggerate the moon, cottage window, and door. 

Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner (1702-1761) 

Recognized as a leading practitioner of reverse glass painters, Baumgartner’s paintings remain remarkably vivid thanks to the special resin-based turpentine he used to apply pigments to glass.

Even after 300 years, his reverse glass paintings remain in excellent condition, displaying finely nuanced colors thanks to the way in which the outlines are finely etched against a black background. His most famous reverse glass paintings focus on city scenes, most notably of Paris and the Louvre over the River Seine.

Jean-Baptiste Glomy (1711–1786) 

No list of reverse glass painters would be complete with the artist whom verre églomisé was named after – the French artist, decorator, and art dealer, Jean-Baptiste Glomy, who was the first to frame prints using glass that had been reverse-painted. 

As the man who popularized églomisé, he was the first to gild and paint on the reverse side of glass. It was a relatively simple technique, applying decorative designs in a combination of plain color and gilding, whic has over time influenced a variety of modern artists in all corners of the world and become a globalized trade between the East and West.

Eastern Promise

First mentioned in an inventory of gifts for Emperor Qianlong in 1722, floral motifs were applied to the reverse side of mirrors that were gifted by European monarchs. Chinese motifs, flowers, birds, trees were painted on the reverse side of the mirror to add some personalization, but also because mirrors were viewed with uncertainty by Mandrin society at the time, as they were seen as a window into another world that could trap images. 

The arrival of European mirrors changed this and Emperor Qianlong was so enchanted that he created a workshop for reverse glass painting at the Imperial Palace, and even ordered his Jesuit painter, Jean-Denis Attiret, to begin painting on glass. The First Opium War in 1840 brought an end to the golden age of Cantonese reverse glass painting, but in that time Chinese artists, particularly those catering to European markets, created exquisite reverse glass paintings.

The techniques used reflected both Western and Eastern traditions. Chinese reverse glass painting typically outlined figures first in thin black lines, whereas Kandinsky, for example, generally outlined figures with thick black lines. Chinese reverse glass paintings are filled with different colors, before a thin white layer is applied to the background, differing from non-Chinese reverse glass paintings that often use black to intensify colors.

And it was the Chinese that introduced reverse glass painting to Japan during the Edo Period at the end of the 19th century. Drawn to the vibrant colors, Japanese artists created reverse-glass paintings of foreign lands and Japanese motifs, with Narashige Koide (1887-1931) and Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968) among the most well-known 20th-century Japanese artists. Similarly, artists in India created mythological and religious scenes using this technique in the 19th century. Indian aristocrats had seen the Chinese reverse glass paintings being shipped to England by the British East India Company and began to take an interest. And soon Chinese painters were invited to India, leading to the birth of Indian reverse glass painting. 

American Influence

Not to be excluded, a handful of American artists including, Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Rebecca Salsbury James (1891-1968), and Benjamin Greenleaf (1786-1864) have produced reverse glass paintings, taking inspiration from American folk art and their European contemporaries. 

Hartley would later become known for his radical abstractions but was influenced by reverse glass painting after relocating to Berlin in 1913 where he became friends with Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Perhaps following Kandinsky’s cue, he painted about a dozen still lifes of flowers using this method. He found the process very challenging though and in a letter to a friend wrote, “it nearly killed me and I never had the courage to take it up again.” 

Despite this, it was Hartley who introduced the medium to James, who specialized in large scale still lifes painted on glass and for three decades from 1928 created some 200 paintings in this medium. The forerunner was Greenleaf though, who favored reverse glass painting over any other technique and produced over 50 documented works during the 19th century, proving that the intricate artform of reverse glass painting has not only transcended time, but geography too. From its beginnings to the present day, it remains a visually stunning technique that continues to captivate art lovers worldwide.