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John LaFarge Biography
American Naturalist artist
born 1835 - died 1910
Student of:
Thomas Couture (1815-1879),
William Morris Hunt
(1824-1879).
John LaFarge (1835-1910), American painter,
muralist, stained-glass designer, and
writer, was one of the most multifaceted
American artists of his time. |
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John LaFarge was born in New
York City on March 31, 1835. He graduated from Mount St. Mary's College in
Emmitsburg, Md., in 1853, and studied law in 1854-1855. The artist went to
Europe in 1856 to study and travel, remaining until the end of 1857. In Paris he met many prominent
literary and artistic figures and studied
painting briefly with Thomas Couture. In
England, La Farge saw the painting of the Pre-Raphaelite artists and in Germany
the rich collections of Old Masters. On his return to America the painter
decided to take up painting and settled in Newport, R.I., where he studied with
William Morris Hunt. In 1860 he married.
Though by today's standards some of John LaFarge paintings seem marred by an
obvious eclecticism, at his best, especially
in his landscapes, the artist shows an admirable feeling
for the realism of light and the modeling
and arrangement of forms, as well as skill
in eliminating nonessential elements, as in
his Bishop Berkeley's Rock (1868). John LaFarge painting
sale varies from flower pieces that are often
distinguished by a suave handling of
watercolor, to self-consciously romantic
themes of the mysterious and the
frightening, as in his famous Wolf Charmer,
which was used as an illustration in 1867
for the Riverside Magazine.
In 1886 La Farge and his friend the
historian Henry Adams visited Japan. In
1890-1891 they traveled to the South Seas.
The best of his South Sea paintings,
done in both John LaFarge watercolor and oil, combine a
sense of the exotic with the immediacy of
precise anthropological observation, such as
Maua, Our Boatman (1891).
Along with his varied artistic activities John LaFarge found
time for writing and lecturing. His publications included An Artist's Letters
from Japan (1897), The Higher Life in Art (1905), and Reminiscences of the South
Seas (1911). A series of lectures the artist gave in 1893 was published as
Considerations on Painting (1895). John LaFarge died in Providence,
R.I., on Nov. 14, 1910. |
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