Afternoon: Blue and White Sky, Haystack

The present work was included in the first one-man show of John La Farge's works at Messrs. Pierce & Company in Boston. The exhibition was followed by an auction of the works on view and was acquired by banker and mill owner John Amory Lowell before being sold to Edward William Hooper, a Union general. According to Henry A. La Farge, in the present work, "the huge dark mass of a haystack immediately in front blocks the faint sunlight of a pale luminous sky, throwing the nearest foreground into deep shade. This is a singular concept for the year 1859 when it was painted, one which would have been less surprising fifteen or twenty years later in the full bloom of Impressionism, or when Monet was painting his Haystack series. But to La Farge this was simply a study from nature" ("John La Farge and the 1878 Auction of His Works," The American Art Annual, vol. XV, no. 3, summer 1983, p. 6).