"The Infant Bacchus" 1882-1884

by John La Farge

Window from Washington B. Thomas house

Stained Glass

based on a photograph of Helena and child in a tableau of a family pantomime

John La Farge knew everyone. He studied in Newport with William Morris Hunt. (William and Henry James were part of the group.) He painted, did watercolors, designed interiors for churches and reinvented the stain-glass window. He tutored Helena and Maria Oakey. (He was a ardent flower painter and encouraged both women to paint flowers.)
He was friends with Henry Adams and Winslow Homer and Stanford White and Saint-Gaudens. There's a painting of Homer's of a woman on the top of a windy hillside that was a bet between La Farge and Homer over the use of brown. (Winslow was fond of brown- La Farge wanted to talk him out of it.) There were unpublished copies of "The Rubayat of Omar Kayyam" floating around New York because Helena found it in La Farge's Studio and asked to borrow it. He made it to Tahiti before Gauguin. Its said that Henry James wrote like La Farge talked.

"Peonies Blown in the Wind"
1886

by John La Farge

Window from studio of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Stained Glass