Glass

Anonymous Persian Maker
Bottle with Dropper Spout
18th century
cobalt glass
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous Chinese Maker
Bowl with Scrolls and Geometric Panels
18th century
carved red glass
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Roman Empire
Bowl
4th century AD
pale blue free-blown glass
Harvard Art Museums

Roman Empire
Male Figure with Head turned
1st century AD
fragment of glass relief-plaque
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous German Maker
Mug
ca. 1700
ruby glass with silver-gilt mounts
Victoria & Albert Museum

Maison Fonsèque and Olive of Paris
Brooch
ca. 1889
glass fruit mounted in gold and diamonds
Victoria & Albert Museum

Antonio Salviati
Small Rose-colored Vase
ca. 1885-90
Venetian glass
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

– Gertrude Stein, from Tender Buttons (1914)

New England Glass Company
Plate
ca. 1883-88
glass
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Roman Empire
Dancing Maenad
1st century AD
glass cameo
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Italian Maker
Brooch
ca. 1820-30
glass micromosaic panel set in silver-gilt filigree
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous Venetian Maker
Chandelier
18th century
Venetian glass
Palazzo dei Cerretani, Florence

after Dirck Pietersz Crabeth
Creation of Eve - The Fall of Man
ca. 1560-70
stained glass panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

John La Farge
Firescreen
1874
leaded opalescent glass set in brass
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Cathy de Monchaux
Wandering about in the Future, looking forward to the Past
1994
glass panels with metal fittings and velvet ribbon
Tate Gallery

John La Farge (1835-1910) as Collected in Boston

John La Farge
Study for Decorative Panel
ca. 1875-1900
watercolor
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Study for Stained Glass Window
ca. 1875-1900
watercolor
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Study for Skylight
ca. 1875-1900
watercolor
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Peonies Blowing in the Wind (window)
1886
glass and lead
(created for London studio of Lawrence Alma-Tadema)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Fish and Flowering Branch (window)
ca. 1890
glass and lead
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Butterflies and Foliage (window)
1889
glass and lead
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"John La Farge was the eldest child in a family of urbane, affluent French immigrants who had earlier settled in New York City.  He was born in 1835, and his education was thorough, with attention to literature, French, and Roman Catholicism.  He received drawing lessons from his grandfather and training in watercolor technique from an unknown English artist.  Initially, though, he saw his artistic practice only as an avocation, a diversion during his teenage years at Mount Saint Mary's College in Maryland and Saint John's College in New York.  Afterwards, he studied law in New York City, while experimenting with oil painting."

"By 1856, however, La Farge had left for Paris, where his family connections helped to secure his introduction to that city's elite literary and artistic circles.  Indeed, his later career would be marked by its preoccupation with sometimes esoteric intellectual and aesthetic matters.  While abroad, he traveled in northern Europe, copied the Old Masters, and spent a few weeks in the studio of Thomas Couture.  The illness of his father, however, necessitated his return to the United States.  After briefly taking up the study of law again in 1857, he rented a studio (which he maintained for the rest of his career) in New York's Tenth Street studio building, where he met the building's architect Richard Morris Hunt.  This was the likely impetus for La Farge's decision in 1859 to travel to Newport, Rhode Island, and study painting with the architect's brother, William Morris Hunt."

"La Farge married Margaret Perry in 1860, and for most of the rest of his career, his family life was centered in Rhode Island.  In this seminal period of the late 1860s he cultivated an interest in Japanese art and explored a highly personal style of still-life and plein-air landscape painting.  His wide interests eventually led him to innovations in other media as well.  By 1875, for example, he was working in stained glass, and a year later, he directed the decorative program for Trinity Church, Boston, designed by the architect H.H. Richardson.  La Farge became a leader in the mural movement, and his commissions for churches, government buildings, and opulent private homes were a welcome source of income in later years.  This work usually kept him in Boston or New York, however, separated from his family.  . . .  Nearly always in need of money to pay the many employees required for his glass and mural projects, he found that his writing helped cover these mounting bills.  He was also known as a lecturer on art matters, although this great variety of activities became increasingly taxing in his final years.  He continued to take on large commissions, however, even as his fragile health and fiscal insolvency became critical."

 – from the artist's biography published in the Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

John La Farge
Mural Design - Angels representing Adoration
ca. 1890-1900
watercolor
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Mural Design - Angels representing Praise
ca. 1890-1900
watercolor
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Mural Design - Angels representing Thanksgiving
ca. 1890-1900
watercolor
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Mural Design - Angels representing Love
ca. 1890-1900
watercolor
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Angel and Magdalene
ca. 1890
watercolor
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
The Three Wise Men
1878
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Woman bending down Branch
ca. 1881
oil on canvas
(study for Cornelius Vanderbilt house, New York)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Moonlit Seascape
ca. 1883
watercolor
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nineteenth-Century Things of Beauty

Unknown Artist
Bell Jar with Wax Fruit and Dessert Arrangement
 ca. 1860-80
wax, paraffin, tempera, glass
Philadelphia Museum of Art

René Lalique
Necklace
ca. 1897-99
enameled-gold, opals, amethysts
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

John La Farge
Vase of Flowers
1864
oil on gilded panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John La Farge
Firescreen
1884
leaded opalescent glass and brass
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Gradus Ad Parnassum

Oh I know
If I'd practiced the piano
I'd never be so low
As I now am

Where's Sylvia Beerman?
Married, rich and cool
In New Rochelle
She was nobody's fool,

She didn't write in verse
She hardly wrote at all
She rose she didn't fall
She never gave a damn

But got up early
To practice Gradus
Ad Parnassum – she
Feels fine.  I know.

– Muriel Rukeyser, from Breaking Open (Random House, 1973)

John La Farge
Wild Roses in an Antique Chinese Bowl
1880
watercolor
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Martin Johnson Heade
Lotus Blossom
ca. 1885-1900
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Martin Johnson Heade
Magnolias
ca. 1883-1900
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Martin Johnson Heade
Hummingbird and Apple Blossoms
1875
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

John Frederick Peto
The Old Cremona
ca. 1887-90
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

XIV

So I became very dark very large
a silent woman this time given to speech
a woman of the river    of that song
and on the beach of the world in storm given
in long lightning seeing the rhyming of those scenes
that make our lives.
Anne Sexton the poet saying
ten days ago to that receptive friend,
the friend of the hand-held camera:
"Muriel is serene."
Am I that in their sight?
Word comes today of Anne's
of Anne's long-approaching
of Anne's over-riding over-falling
suicide.    Speak for    sing for    pray for
everyone in solitary
every living life.

– Muriel Rukeyser, from The Gates (McGraw-Hill, 1976)

John Haberle
The Slate
ca. 1895
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John Haberle
A Bachelor's Drawer
ca. 1890-94
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

John Frederick Peto
Office Board
1885
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

John Frederick Peto
Student's Materials
ca. 1890-1900
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John Frederick Peto
The Poor Man's Store
1885
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston