One of the most creative artists of his day, John La Farge enjoyed a rich and varied career, active as a painter, stained-glass designer, muralist, and illustrator.

Born to affluent parents in New York City, he attended Mount St. Mary's College in Maryland and then studied law. In 1856, while visiting Paris, he associated with leading French artists, copied Old Masters in the Louvre, and familiarized himself with modern color theories. He also studied briefly with the painter Thomas Couture, after which time he went to England, where he saw examples of Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite painting. In 1858 he gave up law to pursue an artistic career. He subsequently went to Newport, Rhode Island, where he received instruction from the American Barbizon painter William Morris Hunt, a former Couture student. He also began drawing and painting directly from nature, focusing on landscapes and floral still lifes that in their fluent handling and simplicity of form had a distinctly modern look.

During the 1870s and 1880s, he produced oils, watercolors, and book illustrations and executed murals and stained glass designs for religious institutions such as Trinity Church in Boston, as well as for residences belonging to William H. and Cornelius Vanderbilt. On extended trips to the Orient and the South Seas during the 1880s and 1890s, he painted exquisite watercolors. La Farge's Considerations on Painting, based on a series of talks given at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was published in 1895.

Source: http://www.roughtongalleries.com/biographies.htm