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The twelve windows represented in "Masterworks" pulse with a colorist's verve and ingenuity. Here are familiar nouveau nature themes: profusions of rowdy blooms and bursting vines, roe deer and sailboats bobbing on azure seas. In the 9-ft.-tall Cockatoo and Parakeet, a bird with opalescent feathers pecks at vibrant cherries. In the magnificent Landscape Triptych, Tiffany played with shade and light in a glade to produce landscape poetry worthy of the Hudson River school of painting. Vase of Red Peonies, dominated by a glorious clot of blossoms, prefigures abstraction.
The 17 leaded-glass lamps displayed in "Masterworks" radiate a ragtime glow -- magnolias, maple leaves, dragonflies and cobwebs are set atop finely wrought bronze bases. Viewed together, however, they overwhelm a modern eye, a sort of kaleidoscopic overdose. Tiffany would perhaps have been embarrassed by such a showing of his lamps. He considered them rankly commercial and beneath his talents. They were, however, a convenient way to use up the several tons of glass chips and shards remaining from his monumental windows. At his 68th birthday party, where more than 160 examples of his art were displayed, Tiffany exhibited only one lamp: a unique construction in which a golden glass globe is supported by shimmering enameled copper peacock heads. Still, the leaded-glass lamps became best sellers and were turned out by the hundreds, peaking in popularity between 1904 and 1912.
Despite such success, however, red was the color of Tiffany's balance sheet. He simply spent more on materials and manpower than he earned in sales and commissions. Every year, thanks to the largesse of his wealthy family, he wrote a check to cover the shortfall, and went on making magnificent windows and exquisite vases. It sounds like something an artist might do.