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Stained-glass artist whose crowning glory is the nave windows of Coventry Cathedral
The master stained-glass artist Lawrence Lee, who has died aged 101, was part of the remarkable generation of British artists that dominated a large part of the 20th century, and included Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Ceri Richards. His most illustrious achievement was masterminding the 10 nave windows in the new Coventry Cathedral, designed by Sir Basil Spence in the early 1950s to stand next to the remains of the old cathedral, which had been destroyed in a second world war bombing raid.
Spence believed that the stained glass should be integrated with the architecture at the design stage and be free from the constraints of traditional church commissions. He was so depressed by the pedestrian windows being produced in postwar Britain that he was about to approach the French artist Fernand Léger. Lawrence, as head of stained glass at the Royal College of Art, invited Spence to be external visitor at the college's final examinations. There, in the experimental, abstract design of the students' work, Spence found what he wanted. The college was invited to tender and won the commission with a mid-priced proposal. There was a great deal of controversy about unfair competition and cheap student labour, as this was the most prized stained-glass commission for years.
The technical problems of producing the 70ft-high windows were massive. The designers were Lawrence and two students, Geoffrey Clarke and Keith New, both later eminent in their own right as sculptor and artist. They each designed three lights and collaborated on the 10th. The colour scheme had been laid down by Spence as green, red, multi-coloured, purple and gold, to represent a progression from birth to death with some Christian symbolism, but each designer was free to construct his own interpretation.
The windows were treated as complementary pairs, and Lawrence's were red and gold, symbolising early manhood. Spence had orientated the new cathedral with the altar facing south, and it was Lawrence's opinion that the light flooding through the John Hutton screen from the south dulled the rich nave windows, which can be seen fully only from the altar. However, it is a great tribute to Lawrence that the overall effect of the nave windows is cohesive and unified. They are stunning even 60 years later, medieval in their energy and free of musty tradition.
The windows were made and exhibited in the school of painting and mural design at the Victoria and Albert Museum. They had to be stored for two years, until the cathedral was finally consecrated in 1962. A famous Private Eye cover depicting Sutherland's tapestry for the cathedral and the nave windows was captioned "All right God, you can come in now."
Lawrence was born in London and brought up in Weybridge, Surrey, where his father, William, a chauffeur and engineer, owned a garage near the Brooklands racetrack. Lawrence shared his love of classic cars. His mother, Rose, was deeply religious, and Lawrence acquired from her the deep knowledge of the biblical and mystical symbolism that would be central to his work.
He attended the local elementary school and Kingston School of Art, where he was recognised as extremely gifted. In 1927 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art (RCA), where his tutor and mentor, Martin Travers, was an architect and designer of stained glass and church furnishings. After graduating in 1930, Lawrence joined Travers in his studio as stained-glass assistant. He was briefly a member of an artistic co-operative with James and Lilian Dring, and taught part-time at Kingston and Bromley schools of art.
Lawrence had a monastic leaning, spending a year in a Franciscan retreat. He joined the armed forces during the second world war, serving as a gunner in north Africa and Italy. Five of his watercolours depicting tanks and the desert are in the Imperial War Museum. Another survives, capturing the eruption of Vesuvius of 1944. He was transferred to the Educational Corps in Italy towards the end of the war, and his more pleasurable duties permitted him to view many of the treasures in wartime storage.
After the war, Lawrence returned to Travers's studio as his chief stained-glass assistant, restoring bomb-damaged churches. When Travers died suddenly in 1948, Lawrence took over all his commissions. He set up a studio in Sutton, Surrey, later in New Malden, and finally at Penshurst, Kent, surrounded by a beautiful garden. He was invited back to the RCA as head of stained glass in 1948, serving until 1968, during which time the department was revitalised.
Coventry established Lawrence's reputation, and he found himself with a new freedom of expression. With the large commission of 10 clerestory windows for the Church of St Andrew and St Paul in Montreal, Canada, in the early 60s, his distinctive style began to emerge – a combination of the alchemy and skills of the medieval craftsman and his own highly individual sense of composition and colour. He never sought to shock, always paying homage to the architecture, but he believed that the experience of looking at a window was to conduct the energy of light as a shock to the retina.
Lawrence was a prolific artist. He worked mostly in ecclesiastical settings, with windows in cathedrals and churches all over Britain, and in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. His style developed in the 60s to semi-abstracted figures and jewel-like colour, far removed from the rigid Victorian influences of his training and moving on from the Arts and Crafts influence. His 1967 east window at St James Church, Abinger, Surrey, was described by Ian Nairn, the architect and critic, as "much the best modern glass in the county".
He made an interesting window for the Chemical Society (now the Royal Society of Chemistry) in Burlington House, London, and his large heraldic appliqué graces the Glaziers Hall. There are also gems in private houses. His last window is in the library of Chew Valley school, Bristol, in memory of his grandson, who died in a car crash in 1994.
He employed and mentored a dozen assistants over the years, and several became eminent practitioners in their own right. I assisted him in the early 80s. He was generous in passing on his knowledge and wisdom and proud of our successes. I think he was the only artist who included his assistant's initials in his signature glassmark.
In 1967 Lawrence wrote Stained Glass, a handbook for artists, and in 1976 co-wrote Stained Glass, An Illustrated Guide. No self-publicist, he refused to be interviewed on television or to consent to a film being made about his life, but he regarded his last book, The Appreciation of Stained Glass (1977), as encapsulating his artistic philosophy.
In 1974 he was master of the Worshipful Company of Glaziers and was instrumental in introducing practising stained-glass artists into the company at an affordable rate and encouraging women into the profession. He was a fellow of the British Society of Master Glass Painters.
His wife, Dorothy, whom he married in 1940, died in 1996. He is survived by their sons, Stephen and Martin.
• Lawrence Stanley Lee, stained-glass artist, born 18 September 1909; died 25 April 2011