Thorn Prikker, Johan

Thorn Prikker, Johan (1868–1932). Dutch painter and designer, born in The Hague, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, 1883–7. Early in his career he passed through phases of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, then changed to an elaborate linear style with which he became a leading exponent of Symbolism and Art Nouveau, as in his most famous painting—the mystical, exotic The Bride (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, 1893). From 1895 he concentrated on the design of mosaics, murals, and stained glass, mainly for churches, continuing in this vein after he settled in Germany in 1904. He taught at several art schools in Germany and was a major force in the development of modern religious art. His masterpiece is perhaps the cycle of windows in the Romanesque church of St George in Cologne, completed in 1930. The American stained-glass artist Robert Sowers comments that here ‘lead lines are used with a graphic eloquence and deep smouldering colours with a monumental gravity that have no parallel even in the greatest medieval windows'.