Important Design
Important Design
Property from a Private Collection, Knoxville, Tennessee
John La Farge
"Persian Carpet" Window from the Charles J. Osborn House, Mamaroneck, New York
Auction Closed
December 8, 07:38 PM GMT
Estimate
30,000 - 50,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Private Collection, Knoxville, Tennessee
John La Farge
"Persian Carpet" Window from the Charles J. Osborn House, Mamaroneck, New York
circa 1883-1885
leaded opalescent glass, painted wood frame
59 x 29¼ in. (149.7 x 74.3 cm) excluding frame
71¾ x 42 in. (182.2 x 106.7 cm) including frame
Barry Hall, by acquisition of the house
Red Baron Antiques, Roswell, Georgia
Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 1980-1985
John La Farge created an unknown number of stained-glass windows for Charles J. Osborn’s country house on Long Island Sound in Mamaroneck, NY. His studio, the La Farge Decorative Art Company, was paid slightly over $1,000 by the architects of the house, McKim, Mead & White. Within ten days of this payment, Osborn was dead, unable to ever enjoy those myriad sparkling confections of glass. They decorated the main hall and entry, the dining room, and the grand stairway, and were in a variety of styles, including armorials, Pompeiian, and arabesques.
Charles Osborn was a wealthy and highly respected stockbroker on Wall Street from the Civil War until shortly before his death. Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, the railroad tycoons, were some of his most important clients. At the time of his death, his estate was rumored to be $4,000,000. The Osborn family owned the house until the 1940s. In 1953, it became a yacht and beach club. By 1971, all of the windows were gone from the house, possibly removed over time or destroyed in a major fire that year. This window is the only one known to survive.
This window takes its composition from a Persian carpet of floral design. La Farge had used oriental carpets as inspiration before. He painted one on the ceiling of the Congregational Church in Newport in 1880, which was based on an actual carpet that he owned.
The window is very similar to a pair designed by La Farge in 1883 for the West 53rd Street home of Arabella Worsham (later Mrs. Collis P. Huntington) now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They represent Morning and Evening, with a figure set into an ornate decorative field. The field of the Worsham windows is a similar mossy green as the Osborn window, a glass color much beloved by La Farge. All three have a similar border of a twisted band. The Osborn window lacks the jewels that make up the flowers of the Worsham windows, but instead includes a red-and-white striped glass that may have been manufactured by the Berkshire Glass Works in Lanesboro, MA.
–Julie L. Sloan