John La Farge’s Second Paradise

Liz Childs (Art History and Archaeology)
John La Farge’s Second Paradise: Voyages in the South Seas, 1890-1891
Yale University Press
November 2010

In 1890, John La Farge and his close friend, historian Henry Adams, embarked on a journey to the islands of the South Pacific, where the artist experienced a period of great creative output. This book showcases many of the most important oils, watercolors, and sketches to come out of La Farge’s two-year voyage to the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans and is the first to place the artist’s South Seas work in the broader context of exotic travel by artists and writers of the 19th century.  Essays explore the artist’s reemergence as a plein air landscape painter, his use of the sketchbook, and his late decorative work, which was reinvigorated by the experience of light and color he discovered in the South Seas. (Edited by Lisa Hodermarsky)