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Lot Essay
John La Farge and Henry Adams visited the picturesque island of Moorea, not far from Tahiti in April 1891. They stayed at the village of Uponohu on Cook's Bay in a house belonging to Tati Salmon, one of their hosts in Tahiti. La Farge considered this area one of the most beautiful sites that he and Adams visited in the South Seas.
La Farge's trip to the South Seas had a profound effect on him, and his experience there would ultimately redirect his art. The native peoples of the islands and the lush tropical scenery provided La Farge with fresh inspiration. Entranced by the new surroundings and subject matter, La Farge began a period of great activity, executing some of his most memorable watercolors and oil paintings.
During his stay at Uponohu on Moorea, La Farge executed a drawing and a watercolor of the vista seen just outside his host's house. These preliminary studies, now in the collections of the Addison Museum of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts and the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, later served as the basis for this large oil version. As in the case of other large easel paintings of South Seas subjects, La Farge began Uponohu, End of Cook's Bay, Island of Moorea, Sunset in the mid-1890s while preparing a large exhibition of travel sketches. He did not finish the picture until 1909 and in March of that year sent the painting to Doll & Richards, Boston, Massachusetts for inclusion in a one-man exhibition.
Among the important paintings executed at this time is the present work Uponohu, End of Cook's Bay, Island of Moorea, Sunset and After-Glow, Tautira River, Tahiti (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Like the majority of La Farge's South Seas paintings, Uponohu, End of Cook's Bay, Island of Moorea, Sunset explores a landscape which the artist found to be evocative of a lost Golden Age and represented the timelessness of classical antiquity.
"If painting the figure simultaneously enthralled and frustrated the artist," writes J. Yarnall, "painting the landscape was relatively effortless. The volcanic mountains and soaring palms seemed to prove the ideal focus and frame for La Farge's vistas of sea, land and sky. The dramatic, intensely colorful natural phenomena, such as the prolonged afterglow cast on the waters after sunset, inspired a new chromatic richness that gave many works a special luminosity." ("Nature and Art in the Painting of John La Farge," John La Farge, New York, 1987, p. 111)
La Farge's trip to the South Seas had a profound effect on him, and his experience there would ultimately redirect his art. The native peoples of the islands and the lush tropical scenery provided La Farge with fresh inspiration. Entranced by the new surroundings and subject matter, La Farge began a period of great activity, executing some of his most memorable watercolors and oil paintings.
During his stay at Uponohu on Moorea, La Farge executed a drawing and a watercolor of the vista seen just outside his host's house. These preliminary studies, now in the collections of the Addison Museum of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts and the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, later served as the basis for this large oil version. As in the case of other large easel paintings of South Seas subjects, La Farge began Uponohu, End of Cook's Bay, Island of Moorea, Sunset in the mid-1890s while preparing a large exhibition of travel sketches. He did not finish the picture until 1909 and in March of that year sent the painting to Doll & Richards, Boston, Massachusetts for inclusion in a one-man exhibition.
Among the important paintings executed at this time is the present work Uponohu, End of Cook's Bay, Island of Moorea, Sunset and After-Glow, Tautira River, Tahiti (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Like the majority of La Farge's South Seas paintings, Uponohu, End of Cook's Bay, Island of Moorea, Sunset explores a landscape which the artist found to be evocative of a lost Golden Age and represented the timelessness of classical antiquity.
"If painting the figure simultaneously enthralled and frustrated the artist," writes J. Yarnall, "painting the landscape was relatively effortless. The volcanic mountains and soaring palms seemed to prove the ideal focus and frame for La Farge's vistas of sea, land and sky. The dramatic, intensely colorful natural phenomena, such as the prolonged afterglow cast on the waters after sunset, inspired a new chromatic richness that gave many works a special luminosity." ("Nature and Art in the Painting of John La Farge," John La Farge, New York, 1987, p. 111)