The Breakers Archives - New England Historical Society

You just might be living near a John La Farge window if you live in Rhode Island or Massachusetts, and in any other New England state you might at least find a painting.

Who’s John La Farge, you might ask?

John La Farge

Born March 31, 1835 to French emigres in New York City, he graduated from Mount St. Mary’s College in Maryland. He then went to Newport to study with William Morris Hunt. There he met and married Margaret Perry, a descendant of Benjamin Franklin and granddaughter of Oliver Hazard Perry. He bought a house in Newport, though his travels, business and mistress kept him away from it half the time.

His friend H.H. Richardson commissioned him to paint murals at Trinity Church, but his easel paintings didn’t sell enough to pay the bills. He began to experiment with stained glass. He won his first commission for a window from friends at Harvard, who wanted a stained glass window to remember the Civil War Dead at Memorial Hall.

Stained glass making was in a sorry state, and La Farge labored to create the same effects of medieval cathedral windows. He layered complementary colors of colored glass, and later worked with opalescent glass—glass with a milky opaque or translucent effect. He even used mottled glass that others might reject as flawed. La Farge began to work directly with a glassmaker to get saturated but subtle colors.

Detail from Butterflies and Foliage at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston by Lori L. Stalteri. Creative Commons (CC By 2.0)

His connections with wealthy homeowners won him several commissions for stained glass windows. He drew from wildly different artistic styles: early Venetian, Buddhist, Islamic, Greek or Roman art. His windows created an exotic, opulent effect, just what Gilded Age millionaires wanted.

His friend Henry Adams, wrote “La Farge alone could use glass like a thirteenth-century artist…

In conversation La Farge’s mind was opaline with infinite shades and refractions of light, and with color toned down to the finest gradations. In glass it was insubordinate; it was renaissance; it asserted his personal force with depth and vehemence of tone never before seen. He seemed bent on crushing rivalry.

(Read about his rivalry with Louis Comfort Tiffany here.)

Battle Window at Harvard’s Memorial Hall

You can see for yourself what Adams meant in many New England cities and towns where La Farge’s work is on display.

Connecticut

Bridgeport: New Britain Museum of American Art, oil on panel, Lady of Shallot

Hartford: Wadsworth Athenaeum, water color, Water Lily and Moth

New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, windows from the Resurrection Promise Church

Maine

Brunswick: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Athens (stained glass window); Tokio Geisha Dancing in the House of Our Neighbor, Nikko, gouache; Meditation of Kuwannon, watercolor.

Rockland: Farnsworth Art Museum–Japanese Fisherman, Study of Sunlight,

Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art– Agathon to Erosanthe (Votive Wreath)

Massachusetts

Boston: The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has a watercolor, painting and drawing collection and the stained glass windows, Morning Glories, Peonies Blown in the Wind

Boston College McMullen Museum of Art– Christ Preaching, St. John the Evangelist, St. Paul

(West Roxbury): Emmanuel Episcopal Church, The Angel Holding a Lyre (or The Harpist)

(Jamaica Plain): St. John’s Episcopal Church Decorative Window

Trinity Church: Presentation of Virgin in Temple, Resurrection of Christ, Vision of St. John: Ieposolyma the New Jerusalem, Wise Virgin, murals

Cambridge: Memorial Hall, Harvard University, Athena Tying a Mourning Fillet, Battle Window, Cornelia – Mother of the Gracchi, Virgil and Homer, several paintings, Fish and Dawn in the Harvard University Art Museum

Manchester-by-the-Sea: Emmanuel Church, memorial stained glass window

Medford: Grace Episcopal Church, Rebecca at the Well

Methuen: First Church, Congregational, The Resurrection (Colonel Henry Coffin Nevins Memorial Window)

Newton: Grace Church, Memorial Window for Lizzie Shinn

“Angel of Help” in the Unity Church in North Easton, Mass.

North Easton: Unity Church, Figures of Wisdom The Angel of Help – Helen Angier Ames Memorial Window

Quincy: Crane Memorial Library, The Old Philosopher, The Angel at the Tomb

Salem: First Church, Faith and Charity

Springfield: George Walter Vincent Smith Museum, Rebecca at the Well

Stockbridge: St. Paul Preaching at Athens – Reverend Samuel P. Parker Memorial Window, The Annunciation

Wellesley: Wellesley College, Houghton Chapel—Memorial windows

Whitman: All Saints’ Episcopal Church

Williamstown: Thompson Memorial Chapel, Williams College, Abraham and an Angel

Peacock by John La Farge

Worcester: Worcester Art Museum, Peacock Window; (moved from Mount Vernon Congregational Church) Angel at the healing waters of Bethesda, Christ with Two Pilgrims