The Good Shepherd was designed 1857; executed 1861 by James Powell and Sons It was apparently at Rossetti's suggestion (Rossetti having declined the invitation himself) that James Powell and Sons of Whitefriars, one of the leading London manufacturers of stained glass before the establishment of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner 6c Co. in April 1861, approached Burne-Jones, who was to produce four significant designs for the firm (see also cat. no. 9). The cartoon for The Good Shepherd, signed and dated 1857 and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is generally accepted as Burne-Jones's earliest identified design for decora- tive art. 1 According to Rossetti, the design had "driven Ruskin wild with joy ... Christ is here represented as a real Shepherd, in such dress as is fit for walking the fields and hills. He car- ries the lost sheep on His shoulder, and it is chewing some vine leaves which are wound round his hat — a lovely idea, is it not? Edward Burne-Jones. Cartoon for The Good Shepherd, 1857. Watercolour and ink, 50 3 A x 18 3 A in. (128 x 47.7 cm). Victoria and Albert Museum, London A loaf and a bottle of wine, the Sacred Elements, hang at His gir- dle; and behind him is a wonderful piece of Gothic landscape." 2 The freshness of the conception and the Pre-Raphaelite naturalism it embraces are indeed more striking than the bright colouring of the glass itself and the overall flatness of effect, which may seem a little garish and unsubtle in comparison with the better-made and more carefully painted glass that William Morris would later produce. No less remarkable is the thorough understanding of two-dimensional design shown by a young artist with no formal training or previous experience. The panel, which was made for the centre light of the east window of the Congregational Church in Maidstone, Kent (now demolished), seems to have been executed only in 1861. This was a commission from the Reverend H. H. Dobney, edi- tor of the Christian Spectator and apparently himself "an artist of no mean order"; Martin Harrison has speculated on the likelihood of personal contact between Dobney and Burne- Jones, who is known to have visited Maidstone in the late 1850s to see his friend the painter Arthur Hughes (1832^1915). 3 Another version of The Good Shepherd was made by Powell's for the Church of Saint Patrick in Trim, County Meath, Ireland, in 1869. 1. Arts Council 1975-76, no. 55, and Victoria and Albert Museum 1996, no. H.ib; for Burne-Jones's work for Powell's, see Sewter 1974-75, vol. 2, pp. 1-4, and John Christian, "Source Material: The Archives of the Whitefriars Studio, London," Artifex 1(1968), pp. 30-46. 2. Letter from Rossetti, quoted in Vallance 1900, p. 2. 3. Martin Harrison, "Church Decoration and Stained Glass," in Victoria and Albert Museum 1996, p. 116.