CURRENT EXHIBITION

JOHN LA FARGE: AMERICAN ARTISTIC GENIUS AND RENAISSANCE MAN
AN EXHIBITION AND SALE OF JOHN LA FARGE PAINTINGS, WATERCOLORS, DRAWINGS,
PRINTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, LETTERS, BOOKS, AND OPALESCENT GLASS WINDOWS
TO BENEFIT THE ACQUISITION AND CONSERVATION OF 13 LA FARGE OPALESCENT GLASS WINDOWS
TO BE INSTALLED IN A NEW CHAPEL & SPIRITUAL LIFE CENTER AT SALVE REGINA UNIVERSITY

Catalogue of exhibition available at:
http://www.vareikafinearts.com/Artwork/SRU_WINDOWS/website_96.pdf


John La Farge was one of the most important American artists and cultural figures of the 19th century. He was born in 1835 in New York City to wealthy French émigré Roman Catholic parents. He received a Catholic education at St. John’s College (later Fordham) in New York and at Mt. Saint Mary’s College in Maryland, where he graduated in 1853.

In 1856, La Farge traveled to Europe and studied with Thomas Couture, who encouraged La Farge to tour the Continent. La Farge moved to Newport in 1859 to study with William Morris Hunt but soon left the studio to paint directly from nature, inspired by Newport’s beautiful environment and his own advanced approach to aesthetics. It was in Newport during the 1860’s and early 1870’s that some critics suggest that La Farge produced the first impressionist experiments painted on American soil and also some of the most beautiful flower paintings ever created. In 1860, the artist married Margaret Mason Perry, with whom he had ten children.

In 1876, La Farge accepted the commission to work with architect Henry Hobson Richardson on the interior decoration of Trinity Church in Copley Square, Boston. This marked the beginning of the artist’s important career as a decorative artist, after which he received numerous domestic, public and ecclesiastical decorative commissions throughout the United States. He is considered the father of the American mural movement and invented the use of opalescent glass in the manufacture of colored glass windows.