Lot Essay
Paradise Valley has been on public display only once since World War II, and yet is one of the best-known works by John La Farge. The picture owes its high profile to the artist's strenuous efforts to promote what he considered a masterful culmination of his early aesthetic and personal interests. Paradise Valley is also the kind of major artistic statement rendered with great technical astuteness that lends itself readily to ever-changing interpretations and diverse interests. To La Farge's contemporaries, the pastoral imagery provoked effusions of religious sentiment, as might be expected of a work grounded in the popular traditions of English and French Realist painting. A generation later, the American Impressionists found in the unusually bright palette and spare composition correspondences with the most innovative techniques of the French Impressionists, whose work was still nascent when La Farge painted Paradise Valley. This high estimation has been revived especially in the past thirty years as modern critics have hailed the canvas as both precocious and prototypical in terms of international art at the time. The painting will undoubtedly always stand out as one of the most important and impressive easel paintings of La Farge's career.
The production of Paradise Valley is intimately entwined with the details of La Farge's life during his first years as an artist. (For primary documentation supporting biographical facts cited thoughout this essay, see J.L. Yarnell, John La Farge in Paradise: The Painter and his Muse, William Vareka Fine Art, Newport, Rhode Island, 1995, pp. 102-14) Until his father died in the summer of 1858, La Farge worked in a New York law firm. Suddenly enriched by a substantial inheritance, he enrolled the next spring in a studio at Newport, Rhode Island, to study with William Morris Hunt (1824-1879), a prize pupil of the French painter Thomas Couture (1815-1870). La Farge quickly grew disenchanted with Hunt's methods, but not before falling in love with a native Newporter of high social standing, Margaret Mason Perry (1839-1925), a granddaughter of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. When they married in October of 1860 and settled in Newport, La Farge found himself personally fulfilled but professionally stranded. As a result, he dedicated himself to independent experimentation in the painting of still lifes and landscapes from nature.
In March of 1860, the La Farges purchased an expensive home in downtown Newport and began frequenting "Paradise," a nearby farming community in Middletown, Rhode Island, that soon became the focus of the artist's work. Their prosperous lifestyle, coupled with the birth of two children in quick succession, drained their finances. In the spring of 1864, the family fled their downtown Newport house under cover of night to escape creditors, beginning a decade marked by frugal and peripatetic living. Each spring, the family rented a different house at Paradise; each fall, they took over the downtown Newport residence of Margaret's mother, who wintered in her native Philadelphia.
In September of 1865, La Farge became seriously ill with lead poisoning and suffered hand paralysis. The following spring, as the paralysis lifted, he decided to produce a major canvas to use at exhibitions in advancing his stalled career. He first began a secularized Madonna, showing his wife kneeling in an open meadow with their youngest son, Bancel (1865-1938), at her side. As known from X-rays performed around 1933 by the Fogg Art Museum Conservation Laboratory, La Farge abandoned this idea and painted the undulating sheep pastures seen in Paradise Valley right over the figures. (see discussion in Yarnell, La Farge in Paradise, p. 102, and illustration, p. 105)
The agrarian vista in Paradise Valley is now completely overgrown and divided between a rock quarry and residential use (figure a). In La Farge's day, this placid pastoral expanse was part of "Paradise Farm," a complex consisting of over sixty acres of land dotted by farmhouses owned by Stephen Peckham Barker (1815-1898) and his family. In 1865, the La Farges boarded at Stephen Barker's own house on Paradise Avenue, the main road in Paradise. The next summer, when La Farge began work on Paradise Valley, the family moved to a Barker family cottage located just over the hill seen at the left of the painting. The artist explained how this living situation contributed to both the pastoral subject matter and realistic handling of Paradise Valley:
My programme was to paint from nature a portrait . . . which was
both novel and absolutely "everydayish." I therefore had to
choose a special moment of the day and a special kind of
weather at a special time of year when I could count upon the
same effect being repeated. Hence, naturally, I painted just
where I lived, within a few hundred yards from my house. I
chose a time of the day when the shadows falling away from me
would not help me to model or draw, or make ready arrangements
for me, as in the concoction of pictures usually; and I also
took a fairly covered day, which would still increase the
absence of shadows. That would be thoroughly commonplace,
as we see it all the time, and yet we know it to be beautiful,
like most of the "out-of-doors." (J. La Farge, "Autobiographical Notes, Memoranda, and Other Material by and about John La Farge:
Recorded to Aid in Writing His Biography," 1905, Royal Cortissoz Correspondence, Beinicke Manuscript and Rare Book Library, Yale
University, items 113-13; Cf. Royal Cortissoz, John La Farge: A Memoir and a Study, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York and Boston, Massachusetts, 1911, pp. 129-30, where there are omissions, changes, and errors introduced in quoting this manuscript.)
Even after the family moved from his house in the hills in late 1866, La Farge continued to work on Paradise Valley for two more years, at times in the downtown Newport atelier of Boston painter George Quincy Thorndike (1827-1886) and at times in a rural studio still standing just off Paradise Avenue.
When first exhibited under the title New England Pasture Land at the National Acadamy of Design in the spring of 1876, the picture riveted the attention of critics. After 1876, La Farge consistently used the title Paradise Valley in exhibiting or publishing the picture. A notable exception occurred at the Berlin International Exposition of 1895 where the catalogue gave the title as Englische Landschaft (English Landscape), no doubt without La Farge's consent or control. When the painting was first exhibited in New York in 1876 some critics dwelled upon the deep spirituality in the pastoral scene, reading religious imagery into the placement of the lambs. (see, for example "The Arts. Representative Pictures at the Acadamy," Appleton's Journal, vol. 15, April 15, 1875, pp. 508-10; "Fine Arts. The National Acadamy Exhibtion. II," Nation, vol. 22, April 20, 1876, p. 268.; and "Art," Atlantic Monthly, vol. 37, June 1876, pp. 759-62) Others, like La Farge's old friend from Hunt's studio, the writer Henry James (1843-1916), appreciated the tonal sophistication and realistic presentation:
The picture gives with wonderful fidelity the quiet and
softness of the place under the light of a Newport
afternoon, so different from the sometimes glaringly
noticeable scenery of more famous spots . . . The evasive,
modest beauty of Newport demands of the artist who
undertakes to put it on canvas just that sympathy with
things delicate and subtle which is shown so often by
Mr. La Farge in his paintings. But by subtlety in the
present case is meant his power to give what escapes a
hasty glance, and rewards only more attentive study . . .
Mr. La Farge has found here a subject admirably suited
for his skill in interpreting gentle unobstrusive things,
and he has performed what he had to do with wonderful
success. (H. James, "Art," Atlantic Monthly, vol. 38, August 1876, pp. 251-52)
Yet others found the spare composition and lack of conventional picturesqueness perplexing. "The picture is the admiration of a few and the wonder of the many," wrote one skeptical critic who went on to describe the canvas as a "vast topographical map." ("The National Academy of Design, Second Notice," Art Journal, New York, vol. 2, June 1876, p. 190) The map analogy recurred in the words of another reviewer who was staggered by the price tag: "La Farge has a green map which he has the impudence to call a picture and to ask $3,000 for it." ("The Fine Arts, Exhibition of the National Acadamy," New York Times, April 8, 1876, p. 7) Such critics were silenced forever six months later when La Farge easily sold the "green map" for the full asking price of $3,000--which sounds unimpressive today but was then an astounding price matched or exceeded by only a handful of American paintings. Considered in this light, the sale of Paradise Valley was a stunning commericial coup for the artist, and its price endured as the highest paid for any of La Farge's works during his lifetime.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Paradise Valley had risen to landmark status both within La Farge's oeuvre and in the context of American painting of the 1860s. With bright tonalities suggestive of French Impressionist art, a pastoral subject indebted to popular works of the British Pre-Raphaelites, and a basis in optical and color theories, Paradise Valley is at once original and eclectic--the kind of genial melding of convention and invention characteristic of La Farge's entire career.
This painting was executed circa 1866-68.
Christie's is grateful to James L. Yarnell for contributing this catalogue essay.
This oil will be included in the forthcoming publication by Yale University Press of the late Henry La Farge's catalogue raisonné of the works of John La Farge, completed by James L. Yarnell and Mary A. La Farge.
The production of Paradise Valley is intimately entwined with the details of La Farge's life during his first years as an artist. (For primary documentation supporting biographical facts cited thoughout this essay, see J.L. Yarnell, John La Farge in Paradise: The Painter and his Muse, William Vareka Fine Art, Newport, Rhode Island, 1995, pp. 102-14) Until his father died in the summer of 1858, La Farge worked in a New York law firm. Suddenly enriched by a substantial inheritance, he enrolled the next spring in a studio at Newport, Rhode Island, to study with William Morris Hunt (1824-1879), a prize pupil of the French painter Thomas Couture (1815-1870). La Farge quickly grew disenchanted with Hunt's methods, but not before falling in love with a native Newporter of high social standing, Margaret Mason Perry (1839-1925), a granddaughter of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. When they married in October of 1860 and settled in Newport, La Farge found himself personally fulfilled but professionally stranded. As a result, he dedicated himself to independent experimentation in the painting of still lifes and landscapes from nature.
In March of 1860, the La Farges purchased an expensive home in downtown Newport and began frequenting "Paradise," a nearby farming community in Middletown, Rhode Island, that soon became the focus of the artist's work. Their prosperous lifestyle, coupled with the birth of two children in quick succession, drained their finances. In the spring of 1864, the family fled their downtown Newport house under cover of night to escape creditors, beginning a decade marked by frugal and peripatetic living. Each spring, the family rented a different house at Paradise; each fall, they took over the downtown Newport residence of Margaret's mother, who wintered in her native Philadelphia.
In September of 1865, La Farge became seriously ill with lead poisoning and suffered hand paralysis. The following spring, as the paralysis lifted, he decided to produce a major canvas to use at exhibitions in advancing his stalled career. He first began a secularized Madonna, showing his wife kneeling in an open meadow with their youngest son, Bancel (1865-1938), at her side. As known from X-rays performed around 1933 by the Fogg Art Museum Conservation Laboratory, La Farge abandoned this idea and painted the undulating sheep pastures seen in Paradise Valley right over the figures. (see discussion in Yarnell, La Farge in Paradise, p. 102, and illustration, p. 105)
The agrarian vista in Paradise Valley is now completely overgrown and divided between a rock quarry and residential use (figure a). In La Farge's day, this placid pastoral expanse was part of "Paradise Farm," a complex consisting of over sixty acres of land dotted by farmhouses owned by Stephen Peckham Barker (1815-1898) and his family. In 1865, the La Farges boarded at Stephen Barker's own house on Paradise Avenue, the main road in Paradise. The next summer, when La Farge began work on Paradise Valley, the family moved to a Barker family cottage located just over the hill seen at the left of the painting. The artist explained how this living situation contributed to both the pastoral subject matter and realistic handling of Paradise Valley:
My programme was to paint from nature a portrait . . . which was
both novel and absolutely "everydayish." I therefore had to
choose a special moment of the day and a special kind of
weather at a special time of year when I could count upon the
same effect being repeated. Hence, naturally, I painted just
where I lived, within a few hundred yards from my house. I
chose a time of the day when the shadows falling away from me
would not help me to model or draw, or make ready arrangements
for me, as in the concoction of pictures usually; and I also
took a fairly covered day, which would still increase the
absence of shadows. That would be thoroughly commonplace,
as we see it all the time, and yet we know it to be beautiful,
like most of the "out-of-doors." (J. La Farge, "Autobiographical Notes, Memoranda, and Other Material by and about John La Farge:
Recorded to Aid in Writing His Biography," 1905, Royal Cortissoz Correspondence, Beinicke Manuscript and Rare Book Library, Yale
University, items 113-13; Cf. Royal Cortissoz, John La Farge: A Memoir and a Study, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York and Boston, Massachusetts, 1911, pp. 129-30, where there are omissions, changes, and errors introduced in quoting this manuscript.)
Even after the family moved from his house in the hills in late 1866, La Farge continued to work on Paradise Valley for two more years, at times in the downtown Newport atelier of Boston painter George Quincy Thorndike (1827-1886) and at times in a rural studio still standing just off Paradise Avenue.
When first exhibited under the title New England Pasture Land at the National Acadamy of Design in the spring of 1876, the picture riveted the attention of critics. After 1876, La Farge consistently used the title Paradise Valley in exhibiting or publishing the picture. A notable exception occurred at the Berlin International Exposition of 1895 where the catalogue gave the title as Englische Landschaft (English Landscape), no doubt without La Farge's consent or control. When the painting was first exhibited in New York in 1876 some critics dwelled upon the deep spirituality in the pastoral scene, reading religious imagery into the placement of the lambs. (see, for example "The Arts. Representative Pictures at the Acadamy," Appleton's Journal, vol. 15, April 15, 1875, pp. 508-10; "Fine Arts. The National Acadamy Exhibtion. II," Nation, vol. 22, April 20, 1876, p. 268.; and "Art," Atlantic Monthly, vol. 37, June 1876, pp. 759-62) Others, like La Farge's old friend from Hunt's studio, the writer Henry James (1843-1916), appreciated the tonal sophistication and realistic presentation:
The picture gives with wonderful fidelity the quiet and
softness of the place under the light of a Newport
afternoon, so different from the sometimes glaringly
noticeable scenery of more famous spots . . . The evasive,
modest beauty of Newport demands of the artist who
undertakes to put it on canvas just that sympathy with
things delicate and subtle which is shown so often by
Mr. La Farge in his paintings. But by subtlety in the
present case is meant his power to give what escapes a
hasty glance, and rewards only more attentive study . . .
Mr. La Farge has found here a subject admirably suited
for his skill in interpreting gentle unobstrusive things,
and he has performed what he had to do with wonderful
success. (H. James, "Art," Atlantic Monthly, vol. 38, August 1876, pp. 251-52)
Yet others found the spare composition and lack of conventional picturesqueness perplexing. "The picture is the admiration of a few and the wonder of the many," wrote one skeptical critic who went on to describe the canvas as a "vast topographical map." ("The National Academy of Design, Second Notice," Art Journal, New York, vol. 2, June 1876, p. 190) The map analogy recurred in the words of another reviewer who was staggered by the price tag: "La Farge has a green map which he has the impudence to call a picture and to ask $3,000 for it." ("The Fine Arts, Exhibition of the National Acadamy," New York Times, April 8, 1876, p. 7) Such critics were silenced forever six months later when La Farge easily sold the "green map" for the full asking price of $3,000--which sounds unimpressive today but was then an astounding price matched or exceeded by only a handful of American paintings. Considered in this light, the sale of Paradise Valley was a stunning commericial coup for the artist, and its price endured as the highest paid for any of La Farge's works during his lifetime.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Paradise Valley had risen to landmark status both within La Farge's oeuvre and in the context of American painting of the 1860s. With bright tonalities suggestive of French Impressionist art, a pastoral subject indebted to popular works of the British Pre-Raphaelites, and a basis in optical and color theories, Paradise Valley is at once original and eclectic--the kind of genial melding of convention and invention characteristic of La Farge's entire career.
This painting was executed circa 1866-68.
Christie's is grateful to James L. Yarnell for contributing this catalogue essay.
This oil will be included in the forthcoming publication by Yale University Press of the late Henry La Farge's catalogue raisonné of the works of John La Farge, completed by James L. Yarnell and Mary A. La Farge.