About this work
What greets the eye is not a window in any conventional sense — it is a field of light made solid. Peonies in red, pink, and white surge across a brilliant blue background , their full-blown heads caught mid-motion, tilted by an invisible wind. Amber-colored flowers against a cream ground form a border around the whole — a framing device drawn directly from the proportional logic of Japanese hanging scrolls. La Farge's signature contribution was his use of opalescent glass in multiple layers to create variegated hues and dramatic effects of depth , and it is everywhere visible here: the peony petals shift and bloom differently as the light changes, their surfaces neither flat nor fully three-dimensional but something hovering between. Chunks and pebbles of glass — even cut, faceted glass nuggets — refract light in the jewel-like border , turning the edge of the composition into something that glitters as much as it contains.
This is the first of a series of at least seven works La Farge created between 1880 and 1909, all based on the theme of peonies in the wind, adapted from Chinese and Japanese handscrolls and porcelains.
Estate records show that La Farge had an extensive collection of Japanese kakemono — several with peony subjects — and the design for his peony window likely came from one in his personal collection.
He recognized that the extreme verticality, flatness, and decorative qualities of Japanese hanging scroll paintings suited them to translation into leaded glass, and even referenced the silk or embroidered borders of the kakemono in his window patterns. The work arrived at a pivotal moment: La Farge had filed for his opalescent glass patent in November 1879 and was awarded it on February 24, 1880 — the same year this first peony design was completed. The rivalry and legal wrangling with Louis Comfort Tiffany over that patent was already underway, making this series both an artistic statement and a declaration of authorship.
As a fine art print, *Peonies Blown in the Wind* carries a mood that is simultaneously still and kinetic — flowers that seem perpetually on the verge of flight. It reads beautifully in rooms with strong natural light, where the layered luminosity of La Farge's original design finds a natural echo, but it holds just as well in a quieter interior, where the deep cobalt ground and blushing pinks anchor a space without dominating it. It speaks to collectors drawn to the intersection of Eastern and Western aesthetics, and to anyone who wants something that rewards long looking — a work whose complexity reveals itself slowly, the way the best things always do.
