John La Farge 1835-1910

The artist John La Farge was born in New York.  Whilst in Europe in 1856 he studied briefly with Thomas Couture, returning to America via England where he was greatly impressed by the Pre-Raphaelite paintings which he saw.  In 1859 he moved to Newport, Rhode Island, where he studied with William Morris Hunt.  From 1856 he began to collect Japanese prints and made considerable use of Japanese concepts of colour and composition.  In the 1870s he transferred his energies to mural painting and stained glass, and carried out a large number of important commissions for churches and for private clients such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and William Whitney.  His invention of opalescent stained glass was rapidly imitated by Louis Tiffany and won him the Legion d'honneur in 1889.

This fine watercolour is the fruit of the artist's trip to Japan in 1886 with his friend Henry Adams.  It was acquired by Sir Thomas and Lady Fermor-Hesketh; the former  having visited Japan on his world voyage by steam yacht The Lancashire Witch in 1880.