Landscape

Over the course of his career, John La Farge pursued a wide variety of visual arts, from landscape painting—such as the one seen here—to illustration, and to mural and stained glass design. This view almost certainly represents the pastoral setting in the environs of Newport, Rhode Island, where the artist moved in 1859 to study with Richard Morris Hunt. This small painting precedes three major Newport landscapes of the 1860s: Paradise Valley (1866-68, Terra Foundation for American Art), The Last Valley—Paradise Rocks (1867-68, National Gallery of Art), and Autumn Study, View over Hanging Rock, Newport, R.I. (1868, Metropolitan Museum of Art). La Farge and his family remained in Newport for many years, providing a steady inspiration to the artist, who grew more experimental with each year. His landscapes always tended toward the French influences of the Barbizon, and later the Impressionist, styles. After exhibiting his Newport works in London and Paris, culminating in a prize at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, La Farge retreated from large landscapes in favor of his new and evolving passion for Asian art and interior design.