Landscape Painting

Paradise Valley, 1866–68
Object-John La Farge, Paradise Valley
John La Farge was an influential painter, muralist, stained glass maker, and writer. This early landscape painting depicts a view from the Paradise Hills, outside Newport, Rhode Island, where the artist vacationed in the post–Civil War years. A verdant coastal pasture, animated with grazing cows and sheep, stretches toward the Atlantic Ocean. A solitary lamb, a Christian symbol of peace, reclines on the green turf. With its generous scale and high horizon, La Farge’s canvas offers a pastoral vision of tranquility and also reflects his growing interest in the compositional aesthetics of Japanese art. La Farge painted Paradise Valley outdoors, defying the traditional studio practice of composing from sketches made on-site. The work’s detailed clarity reveals the influence of the English critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) and his doctrine of painting with exact fidelity to nature, as well as La Farge’s familiarity with then-current scientific theories of visual perception and color.
Learn more about this painting on the Terra Foundation website.
Paradise Valley, 1866–68
Landscape Painting

Landscape with Figures: A Scene from "The Last of the Mohicans", 1826

The Promised Land - The Grayson Family, 1850

Almy Pond, Newport, c. 1857

Our Banner in the Sky, 1861

Rocks at Nahant, 1864

Autumn Afternoon, the Wissahickon, 1864

Brace's Rock, Brace's Cove, 1864

Hunter Mountain, Twilight, 1866

Morning in the Hudson, Haverstraw Bay, 1866

Paradise Valley, 1866–68

Newburyport Marshes: Approaching Storm, c. 1871

The Sidewheeler "The City of St. Paul" on the Mississippi River, Dubuque, Iowa, 1872

On the Hudson near Haverstraw, 1872

The Iceberg, c. 1875

Indian Encampment, c. 1870–76