John LaFarge

While visiting the blue room at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum ( http://www.gardnermuseum.org/ ) in Boston, I stumbled on an interesting watercolor that looked Polynesian and therefore catched my tiki eye with no other information than "LA FARGE" written on the frame... Due to my Tikiphile condition/addiction i couldn't just let it go and i had to know more about it, so I asked a nice old lady on the information booth for more info and she delightfully took out an old little book and told me... "The name of that painting is 'A Samoan Dance' and that's all it's written about it here" So I wrote the name and came back home to do some further research and this is what I found:

John LaFarge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1902 Born March 31, 1835(1835-03-31) New York City, New York Died November 14, 1910 (aged 75)
Nationality American
Field Painting, Stained glass art, Decorator, Writer
Training Mount St. Mary's University
Angel of Help, 1886.
Figure of Wisdom
Angel at the Tomb, Thomas Crane Public Library (Quincy, Massachusetts).

John La Farge (March 31, 1835 – November 14, 1910) was an American painter, muralist, stained glass window maker, decorator, and writer.

Born in New York City, New York, his interest in art began during his training at Mount St. Mary's University[1] and St. John's College (now Fordham University). He had only the study of law in mind until he returned from his first visit to Paris, France where he studied with Thomas Couture and became acquainted with famous literary people of the city. LaFarge subsequently studied with painter William Morris Hunt in Newport.[2] Even LaFarge's earliest drawings and landscapes, done in Newport, Rhode Island, after his marriage in 1861 to Margaret Mason Perry, sister-in-law of Lilla Cabot Perry, show marked originality, especially in the handling of color values, and also the influence of Japanese art, in the study of which he was a pioneer.

Between 1859 and 1870, he illustrated Tennyson's Enoch Arden and Robert Browning's Men and Women. Breadth of observation and structural conception, and a vivid imagination and sense of color are shown by his mural decorations. His first work in mural painting was done in Trinity Church, Boston, in 1873. Then followed his decorations in the Church of the Ascension (the large altarpiece) and St. Paul's Chapel (Columbia University), New York. For the Minnesota State Capitol at St. Paul he executed, at age 71, four great lunettes representing the history of law, and for the Supreme Court building at Baltimore, a similar series with Justice as the theme. In addition there are his vast numbers of other paintings and water colors, notably those recording his extensive travels in the Orient and South Pacific.

His labors in almost every type of art won for him from the French Government the Cross of the Legion of Honor and membership in the principal artistic societies of America, as well as the presidency of the National Society of Mural Painters from 1899 through 1904. Enjoying an extraordinary knowledge of languages (ancient and modern), literature, and art, by his cultured personality and reflective conversation he influenced many other people. Though naturally a questioner he venerated the traditions of religious art, and preserved always his Catholic faith and reverence.

During 1904, he was one of the first seven artists chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. On his passing in 1910, John LaFarge was interred in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. During his life, he maintained a studio at 51 West 10th Street, in Greenwich Village, which is now part of the site of Eugene Lang College.[3]

What's really interesting for us Tiki fans is this:
Letters from the South Seas (unpublished)

And his south seas paintings that I hope will be posted here now...

Awesome find Zeta - I've been to the 'Gardner' museum a dozen times,, as it is absolutely one of my favorite destinations and I am ashamed to have never noticed the piece you discuss!
Kudos to you. I am soo happy you are enjoying your time in Boston - so sorry I cant get to Boston to meet you! Your passion for tiki is so admirable!

Mahalo amigo! This one is for you...

Young Girls Preparing Kava Outside of the Hut Whose Posts Are Decorated wih Flowers