Mary Jane Newill was born in
Shropshire,
England in 1860. Awarded a
John Skirrow Wright scholarship in 1880, Newell continued her studies in
Paris. She returned to Birmingham and was hired to teach embroidery and design at the
Birmingham School of Art in 1892, a position she occupied until 1919. In 1893, Newill's
Babes in the Woods stained glass panel cartoon was displayed at the annual
Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in London, only the second stained glass design by a female artist to be exhibited, and the first by a woman who later became a successful commercial artist. The drawing was later used by
Christopher Whall as an illustration in his influential manual,
Stained Glass Work (1905). She was a designer for the
Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts and a member of the
Birmingham Group and of the
Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. Most of Newill’s stained glass work was commissioned and purchased for private residences. Two public examples of her work are a window in the lady chapel of St. Mary and St. Ambrose Church in
Edgbaston, and a window in
Wrockwardine Church in Shropshire. ==Image gallery==