And no one denies to La Farge a splendour of expression. He is that rara avis among artists, who not only sees the world as a pageant of coloured light, but has found means to express his visions. His inherited instinct for colour has been assiduously cultivated by observation and scientific study, the researches of Professor Root of Columbia University having been enthusiastically followed and adapted by him to his practical requirements. When circumstances brought to him the opportunity of executing windows, immediately came into play his extensive memories, his dreams of possibilities, and, equally, his independence of conventionalized methods. Finding that he could not reach adequate results in the material available, and realizing the weakness of existing methods, he experimented until he discovered the adaptabilities of opaline glass, which has a suggestion of complementary colours, “a mysterious quality of showing a golden yellow, associated with violet, a pink flush on a ground of green.” Moreover, by the infinite variety of modulations, which its making admits, it allows a degree of light and shade in each piece of glass, which not only gives modelling, but increases the depth of tone, sufficient at places to make the darker parts melt softly into the harsh lead-line. This invention by John La Farge of the applicability of opaline glass to the making of coloured windows has put a wide range of means in the hands of the artist, not only in the general richness and equally possible delicacy of effect, but in the increased subtlety attainable through complementary effects and effects of opposition; the material including all kinds of variety in the texture, quality, thickness, and even pattern of the glass, and also almost every variation of density and transparence. It is a palette of extraordinary range, perilously serviceable in the hands of an ambitious person of meagre knowledge and feeling, quite susceptive of commonplace exploitation in those of the ordinary designer. But in the hands of a true artist, who thinks in colour, and has a store of gathered observations backed with scientific assurance, it permits the fullest scope to his imagination, and the opportunity of realizing the most diverse and complex schemes of colour, allowing him to reproduce much of the mystery that time has wrought into the mediæval stained glass, and to add to the latter’s chantlike simplicity of colour and structure the complicated harmonies of modern music. It is an art, indeed, that brings the decorator within measurable distance of the musical composer.
The new intent of this glass and the subsequent developments which have made of it a new fabric were so much the outcome of La Farge’s personal need of expression that it is not surprising he has reached results superior to those of others who employ the same medium. A reason which also contributes to his superiority is that his conception from the start formulates itself in colour, whereas the genesis of most windows would appear to be in the lineal design, clothed in colour afterward. In other words, like every true craftsman, La Farge thinks in his material. The effect of this has been, at least, twofold. In the first place, there has always been a reciprocity of influence between his imagination and his material; while he has been big enough to anticipate the possibilities, he has been big enough also to accept the limitations of the medium. In the second place,—and this really follows from the former,—he has preserved an independence in the character of the design, neither attempting to reproduce that of the old cathedral windows, nor dipping, except occasionally, into that universal cook-book of the average designer, the ornament of the Renaissance. With a larger sense of fitness he found, if anywhere, a prototype for his motives in Eastern art, not only in the mosaics of Byzantium, but in the jewelled inlays, lacquers, textiles, and cloisonné of Japan. Particularly is this true of the windows of pure decoration which he has executed for private houses and again of those superb windows in the west end of Trinity Church in Boston. In these a cultivated taste will be disposed to feel that the splendour and mystery of the fabric are most abundantly manifested. It is pure decoration of the most subtle and resplendent kind.
On the other hand, as soon as the figure is introduced, particularly when the figure must subserve a religious sentiment, a compromise has to be effected between the abstract decoration and the concrete form, between the conventional and the naturalistic. And the inevitable antagonism between the two has become more difficult to reconcile in these days, both for the artist and for ourselves who enjoy his work, because we are no longer satisfied with the simple abstractions of the human form, which sufficed for the childlike faith and narrower experience of ancient peoples. In all his figure windows, therefore, it is most interesting to study how he has eschewed the pictorial motive, which unfortunately the immature taste of the public so persistently demands, and to which, either on compulsion or because he knows no better, the average designer inclines. La Farge, on the contrary, while frankly admitting the claims or the necessity of naturalistic treatment, endeavours, as far as possible, to find some modern form of abstraction for the figure, and to offset it with a freer abstraction or conventionalization in the rest of his composition; so that while the significance of the figure, its form and sentiment, is not swamped, there yet survives the impression that the window is not a picture in glass, but an elevated decoration of transparent and translucent mosaic, inlaid in a cloisonné of ornamental lead-lines.
In a brief appreciation of this artist’s work it is natural to dwell upon him in his capacity of a master decorator, for the whole trend of his activities, at first, perhaps, unconsciously, later with a purpose continually strengthened and expanded, has been in this direction. And he has proved himself a master not only within the restricted field of American art, but in comparison with the master decorators of Europe.
I have spoken of La Farge’s writings being a commentary upon his artistic acts. Often it is in a man’s lighter moments that he makes clear to us the workings of his mind, and La Farge has done so in the journal which he wrote during a vacation in the South Sea Islands. It is the spontaneous utterance of a scholar, at once a dreamer and an analyst; of an artist, also, who sees pictures everywhere; and its word-painting and many-faceted allusiveness to all kinds of memories, derived from art and life and literature, render these impressions of new scenes, which still retain some flavour of the antique world, unique in their exquisite beauty and suggestiveness. Let me quote one passage: “From the intricate tangle of green we saw the amethyst sea and the white line of sounding surf, cutting through the sloping pillars of the cocoanuts that made a mall along the shore; and over on the other side of the narrow harbour the great high green wall of the mountain, warm in the sun, its fringe of cocoanut groves and the few huts hidden within it softened below by the haze blown up from the breakers. All made a picture not too large to be taken in at a glance.” Nor yet too distant. The harbour, observe, is narrow and bounded by a high green wall of mountain. The picture was not shaping itself to him as it might have done to the eyes of a pure landscapist, but in a comparatively flat pattern, as of a wall or window decoration. He sees it with the instinct of a decorator and with his own personal predilections; for he dwells upon the combination of green and blue, which any student of his work may feel to have particular fascination for him. He notes in one part the tangle of green, its suggestive subtlety of pattern and tone; in another, where the huts are half hidden, the welcome spot of density; again,
Copyright by John La Farge.
THE ANGEL OF THE SUN.
Decoration in the Church of the Paulist Fathers, New York.