1835-1910 John La Farge (March 31, 1835 ?C November 14, 1910) was an American painter, stained glass window maker, decorator, and writer. Born in New York City, New York, his interest in art was aroused during his training at Mount St. Mary's University and St. John's College (now Fordham University). He had only the study of law in view until he returned from his first visit to Paris, France where he studied with Thomas Couture and enjoyed the most brilliant literary society of the day. Even his earliest drawings and landscapes, done in Newport, Rhode Island, after his marriage in 1861 to Margaret Mason Perry, sister-in-law of Lilla Cabot Perry, show marked originality, especially in the handling of color values, and also the influence of Japanese art, in the study of which he was a pioneer. La Farge's inquiring mind led him to experiment with color problems, especially in the medium of stained glass. He succeeded not only in rivaling the gorgeousness of the medieval windows, but in adding new resources by his invention of opalescent glass and his original methods of superimposing and welding his material. Among his many masterpieces are the "Battle Window" at Harvard and the cloisonn?? "Peacock Window" in the Worcester Art Museum. Two of his largest windows are located in Unity Church in North Easton, Massachusetts. The earliest of these, the "Angel of Help" was completed in 1887 while the "Figure of Wisdom" dates to 1901. Both of these windows were restored by "Victor Rothman for Stained Glass Inc" of Yonkers, New York in the 1990's. Between 1859 and 1870, he illustrated Tennyson's Enoch Arden and Robert Browning's Men and Women. Breadth of observation and structural conception, and a vivid imagination and sense of color are shown by his mural decorations. His first work in mural painting was done in Trinity Church, Boston, in 1873. Then followed his decorations in the Church of the Ascension (the large altarpiece) and St. Paul's Church, New York. For the State Capitol at St. Paul he executed, in his seventy-first year, four great lunettes representing the history of religion, and for the Supreme Court building at Baltimore, a similar series with Justice as the theme. In addition there are his vast numbers of other paintings and water colors, notably those recording his extensive travels in the Orient and South Pacific. His labors in almost every field of art won for him from the French Government the Cross of the Legion of Honor and membership in the principal artistic societies of America, as well as the presidency of the Society of Mural Painters. Enjoying an extraordinary knowledge of languages (ancient and modern), literature, and art, by his cultured personality and reflective conversation he greatly influenced all who knew him. Though naturally a questioner he venerated the traditions of religious art, and preserved always his Catholic faith and reverence. In 1904, he was one of the first seven chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. On his passing in 1910, John LaFarge was interred in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. During his life, he maintained a studio at 51 West 10th Street, in Greenwich Village, which today is part of the site of Eugene Lang College  Related Paintings of John La Farge :. | Centauress | Flowers on a Japanese Tray on a Mahogany Table | Centauress | Athens | Flowers on a Japanese Tray on a Mahogany Table |
Related Artists:
Armand Palliere
painted Pedro II of Brazil, aged 4 in 1830
Peter Nicolai Arbo
(June 18, 1831 - October 14, 1892) was a Norwegian painter, who specialized in painting motifs from Norwegian history and images from Norse mythology. He is above all noted for Åsgardsreien, a dramatic motif based on a Norwegian folk legend and Valkyrie, which depicts a female figure from Norse mythology. Peter Nicolai Arbo grew up at Gulskogen Manor in Gulskogen, a borough in Drammen, Norway. He was the son of headmaster Christian Fredrik Arbo (1791-1868) and his wife Marie Christiane von Rosen. His brother Carl Oscar Eugen Arbo was a military medical doctor and a pioneer in Norwegian anthropologic studies. Arbo's childhood home, Gulskogen, was built in 1804 as a summer residence for his older cousin, lumber dealer and industrialist Peter Nicolai Arbo.Arbo started his art education with a year at the Art School operated by Frederick Ferdinand Helsted (1809-1875) in Copenhagen 1851-1852. After this, he studied at the art academy in Dusseldorf. From 1853 to 1855 he studied under of Karl Ferdinand Sohn, professor of The Dusseldorf School of Art, and from 1857-1858 under J. E. Henthen who was a battle and animal painter. At Dusseldorf he was for some time a private student of the history painter C. Mengelberg. He had contact with Adolph Tidemand and became a good friend of Hans Gude both of whom were professors at the art academy in Dusseldorf.
Carl Wimar
1828 - 1862,American painter and photographer of German birth. He arrived in St Louis in 1843. From 1846 to 1850 he studied painting under the St Louis artist Leon de Pomarede (1807-92). In 1852 he continued his studies at the Kunstakademie in Desseldorf, where he worked with Josef Fay (1813-75) and Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze until about 1856. In 1858, having once more based himself in St Louis, he travelled up the Mississippi in order to draw and photograph Indians. Wimar joined a party of the American Fur Trading Company and made several journeys between 1858 and 1860 up the Mississippi, Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in search of Indian subjects. His painting, the Buffalo Hunt (1860; St Louis, MO, Washington U., Gal. A.), became one of the original works in the collection of the Western Academy of Art. In 1861 Wimar was commissioned to decorate the rotunda of the St Louis Court-house with scenes of the settlement of the West.