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Material : Stained glass window
Acquisition : Gift of Susan Dwight Bliss (1944)
| Item 10 on 32
American Art
Element of architecture
Area related
New York City (USA)
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| Description |  |
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John La Farge was Louis Comfort Tiffany's chief rival in the use of opalescent, colored and textured glass. Completed a year before La Farge's death, the window was one of the crowning achievements of his multifaceted career. The artist signed a contract for the window in 1908 with Mrs. George T. Bliss that specified "one stone-glass window. Center panel of cloisonné figure, with background. Surrounding panels of leaded glass, ornemental".
The result installed on the grand stairway of Mrs. Bliss's New York town house at 9 East Sixty-eight Street, was this large allegorical window framed by decorative panels of garlands and Pompeian ornament. The central maiden in classical garb draws back an exotic portiere, a replication in glass of a Chinese textile that orginally hung in the Bliss home, to welcome the visitor. When the window, which took more than one year to complete, was finished in November 1909, La Farge was most enthusiastic immodestly exclaiming Mrs. Bliss : "I think it is the finest piece of glass ever made ... I'm prood of it beyond what I can explain".
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