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Lot Essay
Long considered one of America's most complex and innovative artists, John La Farge produced important work in a variety of mediums, especially in oils, watercolors, and stained glass. His career is distinguished by many successes, among them a pair of large landscapes which includes The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks, and its pendant work, Paradise Valley (Terra Foundation for the Arts, Chicago, Illinois). Although he painted both works while still a young artist, they remain among the most impressive and ambitious easel paintings that he ever produced. In light of international developments in art of the time, the two paintings also anticipate later artistic developments, most notably in the direct painting of the Impressionists. Both also earned recongition in exhibitions at home and abroad. The Last Valley, in particular, toured extensively, appearing in Brooklyn, New York; New Haven, Connecticut; Boston, Massachusetts; London, England; Paris, France; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and New York.
Just as La Farge worked outdoors when painting monumental canvases such as The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks, so too would the Impressionists develop their painting techniques using direct observation of light and atmosphere as seen across the landscape. Along with Paradise Valley, this painting, The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks stands as a precocious precursor of American landscape painting in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the canvas marks a high point of his career.
As James Yarnall has recently noted, the events leading up to their creation are closely intertwined with the details of La Farge's life during his first years as an artist: "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 (1834-1879), 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." (J. Yarnall in Christie's, Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture, May 23, 1996, p. 40). He began work on Paradise Valley in 1866, and commenced painting The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks the following year.
Despite their large size, both were painted out of doors, using an approach La Farge had successfully adapted to smaller canvases also painted near his home in Newport. In these two larger canvases, writes James Yarnall, "he applied his principles of painting from nature while avoiding conventional formulas of picturesque composition. In these monumental works, the artist expanded the tenets of his modest program of sketching to the scale of ambitious easel painting, adapting the seemingly artless compositional formats and handling of his early studies. This approach made these pictures unusual for a time in which landscape painters typically sought out the dramatic and heroic aspects of nature and painted them according to established formulas. Although La Farge was simply following his own rigorous logic rather than attempting to be different, what he accomplished in these two works was thoroughly modern in nineteenth-century terms. Late in life, he was fond of discussing these paintings, and his analysis of them illuminates what he meant by 'copying nature' in realistic paintings." (J. Yarnall, et al, John La Farge, New York, 1987, p. 89)
The artist's discussion of his approach to painting Paradise Valley, which he completed first, equally suits this painting The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks. "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 on the effect being repeated. Hence, naturally, I painted just where I lived. I chose a number of difficulties in combination so as to test my acquaintance with them both in theory of color and light and in the practice of painting itself." (John La Farge, p. 89)
For the execution of The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks, La Farge set up an impromptu studio on a high vantage point on a ridge in the Paradise Hills overlooking Bishop Berkeley's Rock. The site was considerably more remote than his first, and was situated about a mile from his home. The more remote location occasioned another unexpected risk, when he found his hut had been vandalized and his picture partly damaged. Nonetheless he proceeded in a deliberate manner to complete The Last Valley. It was likewise "painted from nature," as remembered by the artist, "the same way as the other [Paradise Valley], and took a very long time to paint, so as to get the same light as possible. By going very frequently,--if necessary, everyday, and watching for a few minutes, I could occasionally get what I wanted." (John La Farge, pp. 92, 241)
The subtlety and changeable quality of the light out-of-doors provided a distinct challenge to the artist. It also saved him from what he considered the bland, north light of the typical artist's studio: "The closed light of the studio is more the same for everyone," he wrote, "and for all day, and its problems, however important, are extremely narrow compared with those of out of doors. There I wished to apply principles of light and color, to be as free from recipes as possible, and to indicate very carefully in every part, the exact time of day and circumstances of light." (John La Farge, pp. 21, 25). As pointed out by James Yarnall, The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks also offered more dramatic topography than the first work, and an opportunity for the artist to create more elaborate light effects. "Whereas in painting Paradise Valley, La Farge had selected a bland topography with few linear and lighting contrasts, for The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks he deliberately chose a dramatic gorge viewed at sunset, a time of day when the dual ridges of the valley would be lit in opposition, the one illuminated with the brilliance of the setting sun, the other cloaked in dusk." (John La Farge, p. 92)
Both works were quietly innovative paintings that broke dramatically with the landscape traditions of La Farge's contemporaries. "From the very beginning," writes the art-historian Henry Adams, "La Farge very consciously avoided the bombast of the Hudson River School, which was reaching a climax at just this time in the huge panoramas of Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church. La Farge deliberately chose scenes that were spare and unspectacular, which he painted with visible brushwork that freely discloses the artist's touch. Above all," he concludes, "La Farge avoided obvious formulas, choosing modest motifs and unusual vantage points and composing his paintings from color and light rather than outlines." (John La Farge, pp. 21, 25). The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks contains little of traditional landscape subject matter; La Farge's vision was a more introspective one, offering a quietly subjective note--the artist relying on the forms of the landscape, and its subtle effects of light, to convey its meaning. With this novel approach, he produced a major landmark of nineteenth century American painting, and created a work both eclectic and original--"the kind of genial melding of convention and invention characteristic of La Farge's entire career." (John La Farge, p. 41)
The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks represents a culmination of La Farge's work. A young, ambitious, yet highly sensitive painter, La Farge would always regard the canvas as among his finest achievements. The painting is a summation of the great traditions of landscape painting in America during the first half of the nineteenth century. And at the same time The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks prefigures the progressive aesthetic developments that would come to define American painting during the late nineteenth century. The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks is a touchstone composition of American landscape painting--incorporating both tradition and innovation in a highly personal form of expression.
This oil will be included in the forthcoming publication by Yale University Press of the late Heny La Farge's catalogue raisonné of the works of John La Farge, completed by James L. Yarnall and Mary A. La Farge.
Just as La Farge worked outdoors when painting monumental canvases such as The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks, so too would the Impressionists develop their painting techniques using direct observation of light and atmosphere as seen across the landscape. Along with Paradise Valley, this painting, The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks stands as a precocious precursor of American landscape painting in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the canvas marks a high point of his career.
As James Yarnall has recently noted, the events leading up to their creation are closely intertwined with the details of La Farge's life during his first years as an artist: "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 (1834-1879), 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." (J. Yarnall in Christie's, Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture, May 23, 1996, p. 40). He began work on Paradise Valley in 1866, and commenced painting The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks the following year.
Despite their large size, both were painted out of doors, using an approach La Farge had successfully adapted to smaller canvases also painted near his home in Newport. In these two larger canvases, writes James Yarnall, "he applied his principles of painting from nature while avoiding conventional formulas of picturesque composition. In these monumental works, the artist expanded the tenets of his modest program of sketching to the scale of ambitious easel painting, adapting the seemingly artless compositional formats and handling of his early studies. This approach made these pictures unusual for a time in which landscape painters typically sought out the dramatic and heroic aspects of nature and painted them according to established formulas. Although La Farge was simply following his own rigorous logic rather than attempting to be different, what he accomplished in these two works was thoroughly modern in nineteenth-century terms. Late in life, he was fond of discussing these paintings, and his analysis of them illuminates what he meant by 'copying nature' in realistic paintings." (J. Yarnall, et al, John La Farge, New York, 1987, p. 89)
The artist's discussion of his approach to painting Paradise Valley, which he completed first, equally suits this painting The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks. "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 on the effect being repeated. Hence, naturally, I painted just where I lived. I chose a number of difficulties in combination so as to test my acquaintance with them both in theory of color and light and in the practice of painting itself." (John La Farge, p. 89)
For the execution of The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks, La Farge set up an impromptu studio on a high vantage point on a ridge in the Paradise Hills overlooking Bishop Berkeley's Rock. The site was considerably more remote than his first, and was situated about a mile from his home. The more remote location occasioned another unexpected risk, when he found his hut had been vandalized and his picture partly damaged. Nonetheless he proceeded in a deliberate manner to complete The Last Valley. It was likewise "painted from nature," as remembered by the artist, "the same way as the other [Paradise Valley], and took a very long time to paint, so as to get the same light as possible. By going very frequently,--if necessary, everyday, and watching for a few minutes, I could occasionally get what I wanted." (John La Farge, pp. 92, 241)
The subtlety and changeable quality of the light out-of-doors provided a distinct challenge to the artist. It also saved him from what he considered the bland, north light of the typical artist's studio: "The closed light of the studio is more the same for everyone," he wrote, "and for all day, and its problems, however important, are extremely narrow compared with those of out of doors. There I wished to apply principles of light and color, to be as free from recipes as possible, and to indicate very carefully in every part, the exact time of day and circumstances of light." (John La Farge, pp. 21, 25). As pointed out by James Yarnall, The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks also offered more dramatic topography than the first work, and an opportunity for the artist to create more elaborate light effects. "Whereas in painting Paradise Valley, La Farge had selected a bland topography with few linear and lighting contrasts, for The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks he deliberately chose a dramatic gorge viewed at sunset, a time of day when the dual ridges of the valley would be lit in opposition, the one illuminated with the brilliance of the setting sun, the other cloaked in dusk." (John La Farge, p. 92)
Both works were quietly innovative paintings that broke dramatically with the landscape traditions of La Farge's contemporaries. "From the very beginning," writes the art-historian Henry Adams, "La Farge very consciously avoided the bombast of the Hudson River School, which was reaching a climax at just this time in the huge panoramas of Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church. La Farge deliberately chose scenes that were spare and unspectacular, which he painted with visible brushwork that freely discloses the artist's touch. Above all," he concludes, "La Farge avoided obvious formulas, choosing modest motifs and unusual vantage points and composing his paintings from color and light rather than outlines." (John La Farge, pp. 21, 25). The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks contains little of traditional landscape subject matter; La Farge's vision was a more introspective one, offering a quietly subjective note--the artist relying on the forms of the landscape, and its subtle effects of light, to convey its meaning. With this novel approach, he produced a major landmark of nineteenth century American painting, and created a work both eclectic and original--"the kind of genial melding of convention and invention characteristic of La Farge's entire career." (John La Farge, p. 41)
The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks represents a culmination of La Farge's work. A young, ambitious, yet highly sensitive painter, La Farge would always regard the canvas as among his finest achievements. The painting is a summation of the great traditions of landscape painting in America during the first half of the nineteenth century. And at the same time The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks prefigures the progressive aesthetic developments that would come to define American painting during the late nineteenth century. The Last Valley--Paradise Rocks is a touchstone composition of American landscape painting--incorporating both tradition and innovation in a highly personal form of expression.
This oil will be included in the forthcoming publication by Yale University Press of the late Heny La Farge's catalogue raisonné of the works of John La Farge, completed by James L. Yarnall and Mary A. La Farge.