John La Farge

John La Farge was uniquely gifted as a painter, watercolorist, and stained-glass artist. His work does not resemble that of his peers and is difficult to categorize. Even before Paul Gauguin traveled to Tahiti, La Farge had visited the South Seas with his friend Henry Adams, American man of letters. Late in the 19th century, after American painters had exhausted the vast landscape subjects of the American West and the marvels of South America and the Arctic, La Farge rejected the notion of stunning viewers with exotic island vistas. Instead he painted an intimate view of the Great Pali, a volcanic mountain pass above the Nuuanu valley outside Honolulu on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. Its altitude is so great that the ocean may be seen breaking along the coast. Adams wrote that the view was one of the most beautiful he had ever encountered and that it “literally petrified” La Farge, who feared sketching in its strong south wind. Neither fear nor awe seem to have influenced this small painting, in which La Farge attempted to record the mysterious essence of the area. He was drawn to the muted colors and abstract shapes of the Hawaiian landscape and painted them “as a release from the modern realities of Hawaiian civilization.”

From the Great Pali is a result of LaFarge's trip in 1890-91 with the historian Henry Adams to the South Seas, which included visits to Hawaii, Tahiti, and Samoa. The Great Pali is a volcanic mountain pass which rises 994 feet above the valley of Nuuanu behind Honolulu, where LaFarge and Adams stayed while in Hawaii. Adams described the vista from the Great Pali as "one of the most beautiful views in the world" as it stretches over the volcanic mountains to the shimmering ocean beyond.