[Illustration: Study for Bacchanal Drawing.]
[Illustration: Study for the Watson Window, 1889. This is the one carried out and sent to the Paris Exposition.]
It is a characteristic of Mr. La Farge's art as a painter that he is primarily a colorist. Now it is fairly safe to say that no man since the great Venetians has been at once a consummate draughtsman of the human figure and a consummate master of color; and that apparently the mind of the workman cannot lead his artistic production in such paths that both of these excellences may be attained at once. The workman, if he is sincere, and if he is well advised, follows the course which is easiest for him, and if he conceives of every figure and every group of figures with their setting of landscape or architecture primarily as a piece of splendid coloring, to be taken from nature as an abstract piece of coloring, and so modified that it will tell as an abstract piece of coloring on canvas or on wall--if that is the artist's object he will not improve the work produced on these lines by giving his time and strength to the proposed consideration of accuracy of drawing.
[Illustration: Monument in Newport Cemetery Erected Under the Direction of John La Farge and Augustus St. Gaudens.]