John La Farge

Paper Summary:

A brief examination of the art work of John La Farge, who was considered "the most innovative and versatile American artists of the nineteenth century". The paper explains the impact that Japanese art works and Buddhism had on La Farge's style.

From the Paper:

"The Japanese culture and art began to influence him in the late 1850s and 1860s, as he married Margaret Perry, niece of the Commodore who had opened Japan to Western civilization and trade. By the time he married her in 1860, he had already begun collecting Japanese art, including prints and watercolors.
As a revolutionary artist, he began to include Japanese artistic ideas in his own works, which may have led to a certain confusion by Western standards of the time. Nevertheless, he made use of Japanese ideas in his work and attempted to make Japanese art and style known to the Western world with his essay on Japanese art, written in 1869. In his essay, John La Farge's describes many of the traditional perspectives of Japanese art, including "the asymmetrical compositions, high horizons, and clear, heightened color of Japanese prints" . Later on, he would be able to see for himself the characteristics of Japanese painting and relate to it with his "An Artist's Letters from Japan", written in 1897 on the occasion of his trip to Japan. "

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