File:John La Farge - a memoir and a study (1911) (14762846672).jpg

Identifier: johnlafargememoi00cort_1 (find matches)
Title: John La Farge : a memoir and a study
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Cortissoz, Royal, 1869-1948
Subjects: La Farge, John, 1835-1910
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company :
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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ichLa Farge paid the sum of forty dollars ! Andhis crime consisted in buying the piece fromunder the nose of some one else who wantedit. Recollecting the insignificant episode withmuch enjoyment of its drollery, he wrote meof the odd connection between this rug and adecorative problem which he had to carry outat the time in consonance with certain de-nominational principles : — The motives of it are on the ceiling ofthe Congregational Church in Newport. Nowmy rug had struck me as solving the problemof the ceiling and part of the wall. It suggestedsome of the earlier Romanesque in cruciformpatterns, and yet was evidently not a < Rom-ish pattern. I dare not say it was Mahom-medan. So you see the careless, spendthrift,bad man had some close idea of business du-ties in his wild career. There is an old tale about the great Dukeof Wellington, ruefully murmuring that hewas much exposed to authors. La Fargewas much exposed to committees. I think he Waterfall in our Garden at Nikko, Japan
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C 221 3 liked them, or at any rate that they had forhim a kind of dark fascination, as of augustbodies whose terribilita might at any momentdrift into an amusing phase. There is, to besure, something about committees that is notwholly solemn. From the member of shrink-ing modesty, who knows nothing about art butknows what he likes, to the member whodoes nt know even that, and is accordingly,like Habakkuk, capable de tout, they are all,in the nature of things, possessed of a demon.I do not recall if in that amusing book of M.Le Bons on The Psychology of the Crowd,which I read long ago, there is a chapter oncommittees, but if there is one it must accountfor their ways on mystic grounds. No doubtcommittees, and individuals, occasionallythought that they had reason to be vexed withLa Farge. There is, of course, somethingheinous in an artists failure to finish and de-liver a piece of work, according to contract,on a given Wednesday afternoon at half pasttwo. But sometimes one wearies of th

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