John La Farge, Peonies Blowing in the Wind, 1889
John La Farge (American, 1835 - 1910)
Peonies Blowing in the Wind, 1889
Stained glass, 56 1/2 x 26 1/2 inches (143.51 x 67.31 cm)
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Gift of the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation, F88-34
Sometimes lightning strikes twice. When a wonderful La Farge stained glass window of Peonies in the Wind came up for sale, the Seattle Art Museum snagged it. Then, improbably, this work came up for sale shortly afterward—a previously unknown window of similar design, which La Farge exhibited in Europe in 1895, and which had ended up in a private collection in Scotland. Crosby Kemper generously came forward to purchase it for the museum. His son Crosby Jr. did the bidding.
This whole group of peony windows is connected to the commission La Farge received to produce two windows for the dining room of the Hay-Adams house in Washington D.C., one of H. H. Richardson’s best buildings, which was located across Jackson Square from the White House. The peony window that was in the house ended up in the Smithsonian, but I think this window is even more beautiful, and arguably the best of the series. In my opinion, the glass for this window was personally selected by La Farge, while that for the Smithsonian window was selected by his assistant Thomas Wright, and the whole visual effect is more obvious and brittle.
Bibliography
Henry Adams, Made in America: Ten Centuries of American Art, Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1995, p. 118.
Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, 1991, pp. 118-121.
Henry Adams, "Stained Glass Masterpiece Donated to Museum," Calendar of Events, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, December l989.