Dawn - Allegorical Study in Water Color for the Worsham-Rockefeller Bedroom Window (Primary Title)
John La Farge, American, 1835 - 1910 (Artist)
John La Farge’s watercolor Dawn is the preparatory study for a stained-glass window commissioned by Arabella Worsham for her bedroom, installed in this gallery as the Worsham-Rockefeller Bedroom. When enlarging the original room with a sitting niche, she hired the famed glass artist to create a pair of stained-glass panels. In 1884, following her marriage to Collis Huntington, she sold the house to John D. Rockefeller but removed the glass panels for her own collection. These descended to her son, Archer Milton Huntington, and then were given to the American Academy for Arts and Letters in 1925.
Though La Farge was primarily known as the innovative rival of Louis Comfort Tiffany, who shared his experimental approach to glass, this recently rediscovered watercolor demonstrates his early career as a painter. During travel and study abroad, he was captivated by the work of the English Pre-Raphaelites Gabriel Dante Rossetti and John Everett Millais. Dawn is indebted to their ethereal settings and otherworldly themes.
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