Lot 32

Property from the Estate of Richard J. SchwartzIn the early 1880s, the middle-aged, successful landscape and floral painter John La Farge embarked upon a new career as a decorative artist, seeing in it a path to riches and fame. He was in good company: Louis Comfort Tiffany, the Herter Brothers, and others were taking a similar tack. Between 1880 and 1885, La Farge provided stained-glass windows and other decorations for the likes of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his father, William H. Vanderbilt; the Union League Club; Harvard University; and H. H. Richardson’s Trinity Church in Boston. Although his career as a glass artist would continue until his death, this early phase of his stained-glass work ended in 1885 with the horrendous, highly publicized collapse of his business. It had been only a few short years since La Farge’s development of opalescent glass as a material suitable for stained-glass windows in 1878. Working closely with flint-glass makers in Brooklyn, he had been collecting a trove of unique glass for windows, much of it rejects from the glass factories because it was too translucent, bubbly, or irregular for the vessels and glassware that was their stock in trade. In the early 1880s, he was still purchasing glass from these factories. In addition to the unique pieces, they were also producing some flat glass for him and Tiffany, his principal competitor. Notable among these glasses was confetti glass, a white opalescent glass with small grains of colored glass scattered on its surface. This early confetti is different from the later material that was made with larger shards of very thin glass, which Tiffany would make famous as foliage and flowers in his later landscape windows. In addition, La Farge collected cast-glass jewels and hand-faceted chunks, probably manufactured in Eastern Europe (Germany and Czechoslovakia) that he also incorporated into windows. Most of this was material that had never been used in stained glass before, and it comprised a new style in the medieval craft that by the end of the decade would be christened “American stained glass.” La Farge would come to be called the father of the style.In addition to these unusual materials, he also explored different source material for designs than what had been traditionally used. In addition to neoclassical sculpture, Persian carpets, and Islamic tilework, La Farge particularly translated Japanese art into American stained glass. A long-time Japanese art collector and scholar, he had published the first American essay on Japanese art in 1870 in Raphael Pumpelly’s Across America and Asia. The two windows presented here are excellent examples of windows of this period. Both take popular Japanese motifs treated by many different artists and in a variety of materials as their sources. Morning glories were favorite flowers in woodblock prints (ukiyo-e), wood carvings, inlay, and textiles. Floral subjects silhouetted against the moon were popular subjects in ukiyo-e in particular, found in the work of Hokusai (1797-1858) and Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), among others (Yoshitoshi published a portfolio called One Hundred Aspect of the Moon between 1885 and 1891. La Farge often presented his Japanesque subjects as if they were scrolls on textiles, with complex borders imitating the multiple jacquard fabrics used in kakemono.The materials used in the two following windows are quintessential of this early period and are not found in his later windows, made after the stained glass business had become more commercialized and opalescent glass was not a rare commodity. La Farge’s confetti glass is liberally used in the borders of both windows, as are cast-glass jewels. The outer border of Moon over Clouds is embellished with stylized chrysanthemums formed of faceted oval jewels set in a band of confetti glass. The rectangular panels above and below this border mimic the bands found in kakemono. In Hollyhocks and Morning Glories, round and ovoid cabochons form floral devices in the four corners of the panel. Square cabochons punctuate the confetti-glass border. Floral arabesques with deep red backgrounds above and below the floral scene emulate Japanese damasks.Julie L. SloanStained-Glass Consultant

JOHN LA FARGE (1835-1910)

A 'HOLLYHOCKS AND MORNING GLORIES' WINDOW FROM THE THOMAS E. GROVER HOUSE, CANTON, MASSACHUSETTS, CIRCA 1884

Details

JOHN LA FARGE (1835-1910)
A 'HOLLYHOCKS AND MORNING GLORIES' WINDOW FROM THE THOMAS E. GROVER HOUSE, CANTON, MASSACHUSETTS, CIRCA 1884
leaded glass
40 ½ x 28 in. (102.9 x 71.1 cm.) excluding wood frame

Provenance

Judge Gregory Grovel, Canton, Massachusetts;
Charles J. Maurer, Bay Village, Ohio;
Acquired from the above by the current owner, 1994.

Literature

N. Green, C. Reed (eds.), JapanAmerica: Points of Contact 1876-1970, exhibition catalogue, Ithaca, 2016, p. 190 for an illustration of this window.

Exhibited

Ithaca, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, JapanAmerica: Points of Contact 1876-1970, August - December, 2016

Lot Essay

Hollyhocks and Morning Glories is one of a group of six panels made for the home of Judge Thomas E. Grover in Canton, MA, outside Boston. At the center top was a pair depicting morning glories and hollyhocks, including this one. It was flanked by a pair depicting a curtain with the sky visible above the rod and a small fictive window in the center. (The other floral panel and one curtain panel are now owned by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.) Two lower sections were clear leaded glass. The windows were removed from the house in the late 1970s, when the house was moved and became a bank branch.

Julie L. Sloan

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