Claire Tabouret Says Her Controversial Stained-Glass Windows for Notre-Dame ‘Come From Place of Love’

If there is a through line in the work of the French artist Claire Tabouret, it is her ongoing quest to convey a sense of motion in her work. The 44-year-old is known for her richly colored figurative canvases, now featured in her first career retrospective, “Weaving Waters, Weaving Gestures” at the Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, the Netherlands.

“I fell in love with painting when I discovered Monet’s water lilies and this idea of painting something that’s in movement,” Tabouret said in an interview. “And then I got obsessed with the face and the portrait, which is a bit the same, this kind of fleeting aspect of identity that you cannot really grasp or catch.”

Her Dutch exhibition coincides with a solo show, “Claire Tabouret: In a Single Breath,” at Paris’s Grand Palais, featuring full-sized maquettes of the six stained-glass windows she’s designed for Notre-Dame Cathedral. The artist has painted life-size scenes of the Biblical story of Pentecost, in which God sends the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, following the ascension of Christ into heaven.

In translating her designs to glass, Tabouret hopes to channel movement in different ways, harnessing the power of the translucent surface, so that her visions are “dancing through the light” as the sun rises and falls each day.

A New Look for Notre Dame

The decision to create new stained glass for the historic Parisian church has been a controversial one. The medieval church survived a devastating fire in 2019, but the windows survived unscathed. Nevertheless, President Emmanuel Macron seized upon the restoration work as an opportunity to bring a contemporary touch to the chapels on the south side of the cathedral, designed by 19th-century architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, by hosting an open call to create six new windows.

The backlash was widespread, including from France’s National Commission for Heritage and Architecture, which announced its unanimous disapproval of the project. Nevertheless, over 100 artists applied. A jury headed by Bernard Blistène, former director of Paris’s National Museum of Modern Art, selected Tabouret in December 2024 from a shortlist of finalists.

The show at the Grand Palais is an effort to win over the public to the idea of bringing something new to Notre Dame. So far, people are interested in seeing what Tabouret has come up with.

“There are nearly 4,000 visitors a day. There’s a queue in front. And there’s a lot of debate in the room,” Tabouret said. “Some people are so strongly against it that no matter what, I won’t change their mind, sadly. But I think most people who visit are coming out extremely pleased, and can see I come from a place of love.”

When she entered the competition for the commission, Tabouret knew she was entering a minefield, but “the more I read about it, the more I was convinced it was a beautiful idea—for France, for religion,” she said. “When you live in a country that’s filled with history, you have to have a dialogue that doesn’t freeze everything in time, to preserve and maintain your history, but allow space for new voices and for new movement and for life.”

But she’s also approached the undertaking with a reverence for the cathedral and everything it represents: Tabouret’s windows are being fabricated by Atelier Simon-Marq in Reims, France, one of Europe’s oldest stained-glass workshops

“Every color glass has been made custom for this project from the paintings,” she said. “It’s all very traditional craftsmanship applied to a very contemporary project.”

A Bigger Moment

The artist’s first memories of Notre Dame are from when she first moved to Paris as a young 19-year-old, eager to make it as a painter.

“I would walk by Notre Dame nearly every day, and sometimes I would go inside. It’s very close to the art school, Les Beaux Arts de Paris,” she said, adding that she didn’t get accepted on her first try, but was committed to pursuing her dream of an art career in the city. A quarter of a century later, creating new windows for one of the city’s most beloved landmarks is beyond anything the young Tabouret ever could have imagined.

“It really brings me back to my early memories of arriving alone and having everything to discover in Paris,” she said.

Another thing about the project that appealed to the artist was that it required stepping outside of herself.

“Oftentimes my work is very autobiographical, even if it’s not—what we’re showing in the show at Voorlinden, too, is how everything is kind of a self-portrait in a way,” Tabouret said. “I really wanted, at this point, to work on something that’s not related to me. It’s a bigger story that started way before me and will keep going way after me.”

For Tabouret, a painting typically starts with what she described as “a vision of color.”

“I have a background that’s very bright, neon color even. And then I kind of layer on top of it, so the light really is peeking through the background,” she added.

The retrospective features the artist’s paintings on a variety of surfaces beyond canvases, including paper, ceramics, tapestries, and faux fur.

“I’m always challenging myself with the medium I’m using, the scale,” Tabouret said. “I’m trying to push the experimentation.”