LA FARGE, JOHN

born March 31, 1835, New York, N.Y., U.S. died Nov. 14, 1910, Providence, R.I. American painter, muralist, and stained-glass designer. After graduating from college La Farge studied law, but in 1856 he went to Europe to study art. He worked independently, studying in Paris and coming under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites in England. Returning to the United States, La Farge went in 1859 to Newport, R.I., where he came under the influence of the artist William Morris Hunt. La Farge produced landscapes and figure compositions in the 1860s and was among the earliest American painters to incorporate into his own works stylistic elements derived from progressive French landscape painting of the mid-19th century. He took up mural painting in 1876 with his decorations of the interior of Trinity Church in Boston. His finest mural is the Ascension (1887), in the Church of the Ascension, New York City. About the same time, he became interested in stained glass. Through his invention of opalescent glass and his imaginative designing, as seen in the window Red and White Peonies (1886; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), he brought about a revival of the art in America and won for himself an international reputation. In later life La Farge undertook a series of travels to exotic places, and a notable series of watercolour scenes date from his trips to Japan and the South Pacific in the late 1880s and early '90s. His writings include Considerations on Painting (1895) and An Artist's Letters from Japan (1897).