The Rivalry Between Louis Comfort Tiffany and John La Farge - Part 3

The tenor of the relationship between Tiffany and La Farge is observable in the articles of the period that chronicled their work. In the early 1880s, it was La Farge who was clearly recognized as the first to use opalescent glass in stained glass windows. The first published mention of it appeared in the New York Herald in November, 1879, describing La Farge's Derby window (Fig. 3)¹⁷ Despite the fact that Tiffany was experimenting with stained glass windows in the late 1870s, he did not receive media attention for them until a year after La Farge did, in November, 1880, the same month in which he applied for his patent. The New York Times ran an editorial stating that "Mr. Louis C. Tiffany has finished a window in stained glass which bids fair to mark an epoch in the United States in a new art industry."¹⁸ While this article lauded the window, it did not call Tiffany the first to use this glass. One month later, another Times editorial described La Farge's commission for the home of Darius Ogden Mills in New York, calling La Farge "one of the first, if not absolutely the first, to devote himself' to the solution of problems" in stained glass.¹⁹

Fig. 5. Louis Comfort Tiffany, opalescent window made for his apartment in the Bella Apartments, c. 1880. 24" x 29". Private collection. Helga Photo Studio, courtesy of The Magazine Antiques.

The story that La Farge worked directly with glassmakers to produce glass to his liking was first related in the press in February, 1881. Tiffany would not make such claims for another decade. George Parsons Lathrop, working from notes provided by the artist, reported that "Mr. La Farge was also the first artist in America to manufacture glass to suit himself."²⁰ For the next several months, most articles about American stained glass included the work of both artists, giving almost equal credit to both. From April to June, 1881, just after Tiffany received his patent, Roger Riordan (who had worked with both artists) published a three-part series called "American Stained Glass," in which he gave a balanced description of both artists' work and credited them equally for developments in both glass and artistry in windows.

At the same time, there was an increase in the number of articles about American stained glass naming artists other than La Farge and Tiffany. None of these articles is devoted exclusively to one or the other, and in some, neither is mentioned.²¹ Clearly, within less than two years of La Farge's Derby window, the use of opalescent glass in American stained glass windows was becoming widespread, despite Tiffany's and La Farge's patents. But where Tiffany's name was used, La Farge's was also found, suggesting the writers worked to antagonize or lionize neither, giving similar coverage to both.

In the fall of 1881, articles once again became devoted to one artist or the other but not both, led by reviews and notices of La Farge's exhibition of stained glass at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, a coup of recognition.

Tiffany had just received his patent.²² As favorable notices of La Farge's show began to appear in November, Tiffany appears to have launched an ambitious public relations campaign resulting in articles in which he began to assert his superiority to La Farge in both artistry and innovation.

The largest of these was the series of eleven articles called "From Lobby to Peak," begun in February, 1882, in which Donald G. Mitchell, writer and close friend of Tiffany's, described Tiffany's own apartment at the Bella on E. 26th Street in New York (Fig. 4 and 5).²³ The articles were not merely descriptive, but also explained Tiffany's philosophy of decoration and included descriptions of several stained glass windows and uses of glass. Nevertheless, La Farge was riding a wave of great success and was further recognized in articles on his commissions for the William H. and Cornelius Vanderbilt houses and reviews of the exhibition at his studio of the Battle Window for Harvard's Memorial Hall (Fig. 6).²⁴ The escalation of tone in the published responses to their work in 1882, which they were instrumental in placing, suggests that they were engaged in a stormy battle of some sort, if only for market share. La Farge must have initiated his suit around this time.

The rate of appearance of articles on either artist began to abate in 1883, after the suit had disappeared. The majority published that year were about La Farge.²⁵ Perhaps with the lawsuit now out of the way, it became less important to both artists to pursue their fame in the newspapers. Mentions of La Farge's patent ceased after 1881, and Tiffany's patent was never mentioned in articles of this period. Tiffany did receive press attention about his interiors, such as the Seventh Regiment Armory (Fig. 7) and the Union League Club, where La Farge also provided windows and decorations. These articles rarely mentioned, let alone focused, on Tiffany's window designs, though. In 1884, few articles on the stained glass of either appeared. In fact, until 1889, the number of articles about stained glass in general and Tiffany or La Farge specifically was considerably less than in the years 1879 to 1882. Both artists experienced personal and financial difficulties in the mid-1880s. Despite repeated costly efforts between 1879 and 1885, Tiffany failed to establish a glass furnace of his own. His first wife, May Goddard, died in January of 1884. The following year he lost thousands of dollars in the financial failure of the Lyceum Theater, which he had decorated for a share of the profits instead of being paid. This coincided with La Farge's legal troubles over his decorating company, which culminated in his arrest for grand larceny of his own sketches (the charges were later dropped). These events suggest that both artists had less time to cultivate their images in the media or to develop their artwork.

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