The Looking Glass

Payne was born in King’s Heath, Birmingham. He studied at Birmingham School of Art under E R Taylor and was among the students who painted murals in the Town Hall. He joined the staff of the Birmingham School of Art in 1889. In addition to his teaching he ran a busy stained-glass practice and was involved in a number of decorative schemes with the Bromsgrove Guild. In 1902 he was commissioned to decorate the chapel at Madresfield Court, a task which occupied him for twenty years and is one of the great achievements of the Arts and Crafts movement. This also led to him painting a mural for the Palace of Westminster - his work The Plucking of the Red and White Roses in the Temple Garden, an allegory on the War of the Roses, now hangs in the Palaces East Corridor. He exhibited at the Royal Academy (1899-1935), with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society and elsewhere and was a member of the Society of Painters in Tempera. In 1901 he married Edith Gere, sister of Charles and Margaret Gere and they later settled at St Loe’s House, Amberley, in Gloucestershire thus joining and encouraging many of the Birmingham artists to settle in the Cotswolds. The same window with looking glasses on either side also appears in the artist’s 1935 watercolour The Letter Reader (private collection).