Landscape Painting

John La Farge (1835–1910
Paradise Valley, 1866–68
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.
Landscape Painting

Thomas Cole (1801–1848)
Landscape with Figures: A Scene from "The Last of the Mohicans", 1826

William S. Jewett (1821–1873)
The Promised Land - The Grayson Family, 1850

John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872)
Almy Pond, Newport, c. 1857

Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900)
Our Banner in the Sky, 1861

William Stanley Haseltine (1835–1900)
Rocks at Nahant, 1864

Thomas Moran (1837–1926)
Autumn Afternoon, the Wissahickon, 1864

Fitz Henry Lane (1804–1865)
Brace's Rock, Brace's Cove, 1864

Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880)
Hunter Mountain, Twilight, 1866

Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880)
Morning in the Hudson, Haverstraw Bay, 1866

John La Farge (1835–1910
Paradise Valley, 1866–68

Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904)
Newburyport Marshes: Approaching Storm, c. 1871

Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837–1908)
The Sidewheeler "The City of St. Paul" on the Mississippi River, Dubuque, Iowa, 1872

Francis A. Silva (1835–1886)
On the Hudson near Haverstraw, 1872

Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900)
The Iceberg, c. 1875

Worthington Whittredge (1820–1910)
Indian Encampment, c. 1870–76