John La Farge
John La Farge
1835 - 1910
American painter, decorative artist and writer. He grew up in New York in a prosperous and cultivated French-speaking household. He received his first artistic training at the age of six from his maternal grandfather, an amateur architect and miniature painter. While at Columbia Grammar School, he learnt English watercolour techniques and afterwards studied briefly with George Inness’s teacher, the landscape painter Régis-François Gignoux. In 1856, while touring Europe, he spent a few weeks in Thomas Couture’s studio. Returning to New York via England, he was impressed by the Pre-Raphaelite paintings at the Manchester Art Treasures exhibition of 1857 and later said that they had influenced him when he began to paint. In 1859 he decided to devote himself to art and moved to Newport, RI, to study with William Morris Hunt.
Unlike Hunt, who never broke away from the manner of Couture and Jean-François Millet, La Farge rapidly evolved a highly original and personal style characterized by free brushwork, unusual colour harmonies and great delicacy of feeling (see fig.). His landscapes of the 1860s, almost all of which were executed outdoors, have been compared with the work of the Impressionists; one of his best is the monumental canvas, Paradise Valley (1869; Boston, MA, priv. col., see R. Cortissoz, 1911, opposite p. 24). His intimate floral still-life paintings recall the work of Henri Fantin-Latour but are more experimental in approach.
La Farge began to collect Japanese prints in 1856, earlier than Félix Bracquemond, and he also anticipated Whistler in making use of Japanese concepts of colour and composition in his designs (see JAPONISME). In the 1870s, just as he was beginning to gain recognition for his easel paintings, La Farge shifted his attention to decorative work including encaustic mural painting and stained glass. His first major commission was to decorate the interior of H. H. Richardson’s Trinity Church in Boston. Modelled chiefly on medieval and Early Christian precedents, but drawing also on oriental and Renaissance sources, this project was unveiled early in 1877 and was immediately acclaimed. It was the first large-scale decorative scheme in America to be executed by a distinguished painter and it initiated the movement termed the ‘American Renaissance’.
By marshalling numerous assistants for this project, including such figures as the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, in a manner based on the medieval workshop, La Farge was able to integrate architecture and the various decorative and pictorial arts in a unified ensemble. La Farge’s example was influential, and he gained further important commissions. These included murals for St Thomas’s Church (1878), New York, the Church of the Ascension (1888), New York, the Walker Art Building (1898) at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, the Minnesota State Capitol (1905) and the Baltimore Court-house (1907), as well as decorations for many private residences.
In both his religious and domestic work La Farge sought to give visual form to new impulses in American life. His ecclesiastical work reflected a trend towards High-Church forms of religious observance, and a tendency to approach religion in emotional as well as intellectual terms. His decorative domestic work, such as stained glass, sculpture, mosaic and inlay work, responded to the needs of a new social creature in America, the multi-millionaire. Working for clients (mainly in New York and Newport) such as Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877), William Henry Vanderbilt and William Whitney (1841–1904), La Farge created a decorative splendour that reflected their new wealth and social aspirations.
La Farge’s most significant artistic achievement was the development of opalescent stained glass, which he invented in 1879 and for which he received the Légion d’honneur in 1889. It was rapidly imitated by Louis Tiffany, among others, and proved to be America’s only original contribution to Art Nouveau. La Farge’s invention was inspired by a toothpowder jar on a windowsill. The container was made of the cheapest type of glass, intended to give the effect of marble or porcelain, but it was so poorly manufactured that it looked irregularly streaked and variegated. He reasoned that if such accidental effects could be controlled it would be possible to use the glass itself to create decorative effects. First he concentrated on manufacture, developing new varieties of glass, then he worked on new assembly procedures such as plating (or layering) to modify passages of colour, and the use of copper foil and cloisonné in place of traditional leading. La Farge also enlarged the vocabulary of stained-glass design, in particular by employing Japanese motifs and design. While floral windows were not new, he was the first to create complex and richly pictorial floral windows in stained glass and thus can be credited with originating the 19th-century floral stained-glass window .
La Farge’s later years were occupied chiefly with decorative projects involving murals or stained glass. He also produced some exceptional watercolours, especially during two long journeys with his friend the writer Henry Adams (1838–1918), in 1886 to Japan, and in 1890–91 to the South Seas. Among his wide circle of friends he numbered Henry James and Edmond de Goncourt. In the last two decades of his life La Farge wrote eight books and many essays on art. An obituary for his friend Winslow Homer was written on his own deathbed. His son, Christopher Grant La Farge (1862–1938), was an architect and partner in the firm of Heins & La Farge (see HEINS & LA FARGE), and another son, Bancel La Farge (1865–1938), was a muralist and stained-glass artist. His grandson was the Pulitzer prize-winning author Oliver Hazard Perry La Farge (1901–63). [Henry Adams. " La Farge, John." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 9, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T048703.]
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French, 1864 - 1901
