Lady of Shalott

Artist John La Farge (American, 1835 - 1910)

Dateca. 1862

MediumOil on wood panel

Dimensions9 1/8 × 14 3/4 in. (23.2 × 37.5 cm)
Frame Dimension: 13 7/8 × 19 1/2 × 1 7/8 in. (35.2 × 49.5 × 4.8 cm)

ClassificationsOil Painting

Credit LineHarriet Russell Stanley Fund

Terms

Object number1945.02

DescriptionAfter their marriage in October 1860 the La Farges began to frequent Paradise, a farm on the Atlantic coast just three miles from their home in downtown Newport. There, they befriended Stephen Peckham Barker, the owner of Paradise Farm, a property comprising more than sixty acres and many large houses. During this period, the couple occasionally boarded at Barker's own residence on Paradise Avenue, the main road in Paradise. Just across the street was Paradise Court, a short cul-de-sac that led to a cliff overlooking Nelson's Pond, a marshy expanse surrounded by the groves, pastures, and rocky precipices that became the focus of La Farge's work during the 1860s. (1)
Nelson's Pond is the setting for this melancholy depiction of an episode from "The Lady of Shalott", a popular ballad published in 1852 by the English poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson. In the poem, the Lady of Shalott suffers unrequited love for Sir Lancelot, who in turn loves Guenivere, wife of King Arthur. Once she realizes the futility of her situation, the Lady of Shalott goes mad and places herself on a barge. She floats down the river to the castle at Camelot, where Lancelot sees her expiring as she passes by.
And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and white
The leaves upon her falling light
Thro' the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot;
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott. (2)
La Farge set the scene on the placid waters of Nelson's Pond, beneath the cliff on its west side. (3) Above the curve of the cliff, the intense glow of a setting sun represents the "closing of the day" in Tennyson's poem, an appropriate symbol of the ebbing life of the Lady of Shalott. The prone figure of the protagonist occupies the foreground, her rigid body reclining in a simple wood bark. Her hands clutch a long gown pulled up to her chin; her lips are pursed in half-crazed song, suggesting her imminent demise. The facial features can be identified as those of La Farge's wife, recalling the practice of the British Pre-Raphaelites who used mistresses as models in works similarly based in contemporary English literature.(4) In contrast to this obvious debt to current English artistic practice, La Farge rendered the landscape with the dark palette and evocative moodiness of French Barbizon art, a primary stylistic influence on his work during the early 1860s.
La Farge treated several Tennysonian subjects early in his career. In 1865 he contributed nine illustrations to an edition of "Enoch Arden", a narrative published by Tennyson in 1864.(5) Two drawings from 1864 (whereabouts unknown) were proposed illustrations for "The Palace of Art", an allegorical poem published by Tennyson in 1830. (6) "The Lady of Shalott" appears to have been La Farge's first use of Tennysonian subject matter. In an 1898 exhibition catalogue that he personally prepared for a one-man show held at Doll and Richards in Boston, the artist dated "The Lady of Shalott 1862". (7) This dating correlates with numerous preparatory sketches for the composition found in an 1861 sketchbook. (8)
A sketchbook from 1864 includes "The Lady of Shalott" in a list of works ready to offer for sale. (9) Despite this evidence that the artist considered the work finished by 1864 at the latest, he inexplicably waited until 1875 to exhibit it. That April, he sent "The Lady of Shalott" to a sort of Salon des Refusés held in the New York gallery of Cottier and Company, mounted in protest against the jury practices of the National Academy of Design. Although a catalogue was not published for the show, Cottier issued an invitation that specifically mentions "The Lady of Shalott". (10) One critic decided: "If not a lovable picture [it] is yet fascinating, owing to the delicate expression of sentiment with which it is invested." (11) Another expressed great enthusiasm: "Mr. La Farge was best represented by 'The Lady of Shalott,' a serene and solemn picture-poem; to our thinking, no less important and individual than the poem with which it is associated." (12)
La Farge decided to publish a wood engraving of the painting, and a drawing was executed in 1876 by Francis Augustus Lathrop, one of the artists who assisted him in the decoration of Boston's Trinity Church. The design, however, was never published, and the uncut block (whereabouts unknown) was included in an auction that La Farge held in Boston in 1879. (13)
The next showing of "The Lady of Shalott" took place in 1883 at "Mr. Sutton's American Art Gallery," another exhibition for which no catalogue has been located. An enthusiastic review again documents the occasion:
Another [picture by La Farge] is a small oil showing the figure of a woman, a martyr one supposes, drifting in a tiny boat on a dark river under the most tender and mysterious of twilight skies. This little work shows the very best of Mr. La Farge's gifts the beautiful, rich, solemn splendor of color he can attain, and the intensity and sweetness of expression he can put into a human face. We should rank this perhaps above all its present fellows, and with the most perfect creations of modern art. (14)
In 1887 "The Lady of Shalott" was sent to the Society of American Artists and listed in a published exhibition catalogue for the first time. Afterward, La Farge included the picture in one-man shows in Boston, Saint Louis, Chicago, and Pittsburgh before selling it to the noted collector of American art William T. Evans. As outlined in a letter La Farge wrote to Evans on October 24, 1899, the latter agreed to buy "The Lady of Shalott" as part of a package deal, along with the large easel painting "The Visit of Nicodemus to Christ" (National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.). The price for both, $2000, was a very good one at the time, equivalent to roughly $60,000 today. But Evans apparently did not want the pictures right away-and so, as La Farge put it:
On reflection, I think that it will be better for me to store the two pictures, the "Christ and Nicodemus" and the "Lady of Shallott". They will thus be perfectly safe, and I can give you an order for them, so that they will be subject to your call when you desire to take them.
I understand that you will also be ready to pay for them at same in January or February: The price for the two being Two Thousand Dollars. Shall you require the frames? I had them valued by Geo. F. Of [a New York framer], who estimates the frame of the "Nicodemus", as it stands, at $75 and the frame of the "Lady of Shalott" at $25. There is another frame for the "Lady of Shalott". As the shape is peculiar and I make no other use for them, they are at your service,… I shall store the pictures at the Manhattan Storage Co, which is safe and good. (15)
After including both oils in various exhibitions of hish collection, Evans gave "The Visit of Nicodemus" to the Smithsonian Institution in 1909, and it remains there today. He kept "The Lady of Shalott" until 1913, when it was auctioned with the bulk of his American works. "The Lady of Shalott" subsequently passed through the various dealers and agents before finally being acquired about 1919 by the noted art publisher, writer, and collector of American art Frederic Fairchild Sherman. Two years after his death in 1940, Sherman's widow sold the picture at auction to Kleeman Galleries, the source for Alix W. Stanley's purchase two years later.
JLY
Bibliography:
Cecilia Waern, "John La Farge: Artist and Writer" (London: Seeley; New York: Macmillan, 1896); Royal Cortissoz, John La Farge: "A Memoir and a Study" (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1911); H. Barbara Weinberg, "The Decorative Work of John La Farge' (New York: Garland, 1977); Henry Adams et al., 'John La Farge: Essays," exhib. cat. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1987); James L. Yarnall, "John La Farge in Paradise: The Painter and His Muse", exhib. cat. (New York: William Vareika Fine Arts, 1995).

Notes:
1. For a complete study of La Farge's life at Paradise, see Yarnall, "John La Farge in Paradise: The Painter and His Muse" (Newport:William Varieka Fine Arts,1995).
2. Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Poetic and Dramatic Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson" (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899), p. 35.
3. Changes to Nelson's Pond since the 1860s make it difficult today to obtain the precise view seen in La Farge's picture. In 1882 the pond was dredged and diked to make it suitable for use in the Newport Water Works system. The resulting flooding of the pond submerges rocks seen at the base of the cliff in "The Lady of Shallot" in all but the driest weather. The grove of trees seen to the right in the picture (dubbed by La Farge his "Sacred Grove") has also changed. After 1891 Paradise Farm was sold as a country residence, resulting in the cessation of grazing and land cultivation. After the land returned to a wild state, foliage obscured much of the ledge visible in Lafarge's picture.
4. Several studies of this topic have been produced in the last decades, the most relevant being an essay by Elizabeth Nelson, "Tennyson and the Ladies of Shallot," in "Ladies of Shallot: A Victorian Masterpiece and Its Contexts" (providence: Brown University, 1985),pp.4-16.
5. Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Enoch Arden" (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865). Just as "Enoch Arden" became one of Tennyson's most popular works, LaFarge's illustrations earned him great recognition for their blending of Japanese and Pre-Raphaelite design elements. In addition to LaFarge, Elihu Vedder (1836-1923) contributed illustrations to this volume and actually came to Paradise in the fall of 1864 to work alongside LaFarge. On Vedder's role and that of two other artists, see James L. Yarnall, "Tennyson Illustration in Boston, 1864-1872, "Imprint :Journal of the American Historical Print Collectors Society 7" (autumn 1982), pp.10-16.
6.Leonard's Gallery, Boston, "Drawings, Water-Colors, and Oil-Paintings by John La Farge To Be Sold at Auction", December 18-19 [1879], p. 12, cat. no. 28 (drawings) "1864. Indian Cama. Drawing from a poem of Tennyson's. Charcoal. 7 x 13" and p. 12, cat. no. 29 (drawings): "1864. St. Cecelia [sic]. From a poem by Tennyson. Drawing in charcoal (somewhat rubbed), 9 3/4 x 12 1/8." These illustrate, respectively, lines 113-16 and 97-100 of "Tennyson's Palace of Art". The image of Saint Cecilia is known from a photograph preserved in the Boston Public Library and illustrated in Yarnall, "La Farge in Paradise", p. 51.
7. Doll and Richards, Boston, "Exhibition and Private Sale of Paintings in Water Color Chiefly from South Sea Islands and Japan", March 18-30,1891,1898 no. 41.
8. Yale University Art Gallery, Sketchbook, acc. no. 1984.71.18. The date 1861 is inscribed on the inside of the front and back covers.
9. Yale University Art Gallery, Sketchbook, acc. no. 1984.71.23. The date 1864 is inscribed on the inside of the front and back covers. Such lists of works to sell are regularly found in La Farge's sketchbooks, which he used at times as address books or notepads. "The Lady of Shalott" is also listed in another sketchbook from the same collections , dated 1870 on the back cover (acc. no. 1984.71.30), indicating La Farge's repeated desire to sell the picture.
10. The invitation is in the Richard Watson Gilder Papers, New York Public Library, folder C11.
11. "A Remarkable Exhibition," "New York Evening Post", April 29, 1875, p. 2. The critic inaccurately identified the subject as "Elaine," the protagonist of another Tennyson poem who similarly expires out of love for Lancelot and places herself on a barge.
12. "Culture and Progress: Some Other Pictures," "Scribner's Magazine" 10 (June 1875): p. 253.
13. Leonard's Gallery, 1879 p. 11, cat. no. 20 (drawings): "1876. The Lady of Shalott. India-ink on wood. Copy by Mr. Lathrop from painting of same subject by Mr. La Farge. 5 x 7."
14. "The Fine Arts: The Exhibition of Mr. La Farge's Pictures," Critic 3 (June 30, 1883): 301. The picture was again identified as "Elaine" in another review of his show; "Summer Exhibition at the American Art Galleries," "Studio 1" [June 23, 1883]: 274. The paintings may have been one of four "old" pictures by La Farge that were included in a showing of the New York Art Club the next month at the same gallery; see "The New York Art Club's Exhibition," New York Sun, July 14, 1883, p. 2).
15. John La Farge to William T. Evans, October 24, 1899, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., curatorial files.

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