Louis Comfort Tiffany [1848

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Louis Comfort Tiffany1848 1933

• Autumn Landscape
• The River of Life
• c. 1923 - 1924

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• Louis married Mary Woodbridge Goddard
  (c1850-1884) on May 15, 1872 in Norwich,
  Connecticut and had the following children
• Mary Woodbridge Tiffany (18731963) who married
  Graham Lusk
• Charles Louis Tiffany I (1874-1874)
• Charles Louis Tiffany II (18781947) and
• Hilda Goddard Tiffany (18791908), the youngest.
• After the death of his wife, he married Louise
  Wakeman Knox (18511904) on November 9, 1886.
  They had the following children
• Louise Comfort Tiffany (18871974)
• Julia DeForest Tiffany (18871973) who married
  Gurdon S. Parker then married Francis Minot Weld
  
• Annie Olivia Tiffany (18881892) and
• Dorothy Trimble Tiffany (18911979), who, as
  Dorothy Burlingham, later became a noted
  psychoanalyst and lifelong friend and partner of
  Anna Freud.
• Many of Tiffany's descendants are active in the
  arts, politics, and the sciences. Only one
  descendant is working in glass today Dr. Rodman
  Gilder Miller of Seattle, Washington.

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• Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of the founder of the
  New York City jewelry store that still bears the
  family name, took no interest in his fathers
  business.

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• Instead, he trained as a painter in Paris, and
  upon returning to New York decided to channel his
  talents into the decorative arts.
• He became interested in glassmaking from about
  1875 and worked at several glasshouses in
  Brooklyn between then and 1878.
• In 1879, he joined with Candace Wheeler, Samuel
  Colman and Lockwood de Forest to form Louis
  Comfort Tiffany and Associated American Artists.
• Tiffany's leadership and talent, as well as by
  his father's money and connections, led this
  business to thrive.
• I believe there is more in it than in
  painting pictures, he declared.

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• As American artist and designer who worked in the
  decorative arts and is best known for his work in
  stained glass.
• He is the American artist most associated with
  the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements.

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Art Nouveau New Art1890 - 1905

• A reaction to academic art of the 19th century,
  it is characterized by organic, especially floral
  and other plant-inspired motifs, as well as
  highly stylized, flowing curvilinear forms.
• Art Nouveau is an approach to design according to
  which artists should work on everything from
  architecture to furniture, making art part of
  everyday life

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• In 1881 Tiffany did the interior design of the
  Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, which
  still remains,
• The new firm's most notable work came in 1882
  when President Chester Alan Arthur refused to
  move into the White House until it had been
  redecorated. He commissioned Tiffany, who had
  begun to make a name for himself in New York
  society for the firm's interior design work, to
  redo the state rooms, which Arthur found
  charmless.
• Tiffany worked on the East Room, the Blue Room,
  the Red Room, the State Dining Room and the
  Entrance Hall, refurnishing, repainting in
  decorative patterns, installing newly designed
  mantelpieces, changing to wallpaper with dense
  patterns and, of course, adding Tiffany glass to
  gaslight fixtures, windows and adding the
  opalescent floor to ceiling glass screen in the
  Entrance Hall

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The Entrance Hall of the White House in 1882,
showing the newly installed Tiffany glass
screens.

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• A desire to concentrate on art in glass led to
  the breakup of the firm in 1885 when Tiffany
  chose to establish his own glassmaking firm that
  same year.
• The first Tiffany Glass Company was incorporated
  December 1, 1885 and in 1902 became known as the
  Tiffany Studios.

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• By the 1890s, Tiffany was exploring the
  possibilities of colored glass, a medium that had
  remained virtually unchanged since the Middle
  Ages.
• In the late nineteenth century, it was
  experiencing a revival, owing to the large number
  of churches under construction in prospering
  American cities.

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• Tiffany used cheap jelly jars and bottles because
  they had the mineral impurities that finer glass
  lacked.
• When he was unable to convince fine glassmakers
  to leave the impurities in, he began making his
  own glass.
• Tiffany used opalescent glass in a variety of
  colors and textures to create a unique style of
  stained glass.
• This can be contrasted with the method of
  painting in enamels or glass paint on colorless
  glass that had been the dominant method of
  creating stained glass for hundred of years in
  Europe.

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• In 1893, Tiffany built a new factory called the
  Stourbridge Glass Company, later called Tiffany
  Glass Furnaces, which was located in Corona,
  Queens, New York.
• In 1893, his company also introduced the term
  Favrile in conjunction with his first production
  of blown glass at his new glass factory.
• Some early examples of his lamps were exhibited
  in the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. At the
  Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris, he won a
  gold medal with his stained glass windows The
  Four Seasons

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Favrile Glass

• Favrile glass is a type of iridescent art glass
  designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.
• It was patented in 1894 and first produced in
  1896.
• It differs from most iridescent glasses because
  the color is ingrained in the glass itself, as
  well as having distinctive coloring.
• Favrile glass was used in Tiffany's stained-glass
  windows.

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Favrile Glass (Handmade)

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Tiffany Designed

• Stained glass windows
• Lamps
• Glass mosaics
• Blown glass
• Ceramics
• Jewelry
• Enamels
• Metalwork

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• Sermon on the
• Mount at Arlington
• Street Church
• in Boston

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• Nicodemus Came to
• Him by Night, First
• Presbyterian Church,
• Lockport, NY

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• The Baptism
• of Christ,
• at Brown Memorial

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• The Annunciation
• to the Shepherds,
• at Brown Memorial

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• Tree of Life

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• Girl with
• Cherry Blossoms

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• Gradually, stained glass made its way into
  secular settings, with biblical subjects giving
  way to naturalistic motifs and woodland themes.
• These luminous windows worked like landscape
  paintings to introduce a sense of natural beauty
  into an urban home.

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• Their dense designs had the added advantage of
  blocking views of dirty streets and back alleys
  that an ordinary window might reveal.

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Autumn Landscape

• was commissioned by real estate magnate
• Loren Delbert Towle for his Gothic Revival
  mansion in Boston.
• The estate's construction began in 1920 as a
  35-room, with formal gardens, terraces, tennis
  courts, and garage.
• Towle died in 1924 before the mansion was
  completed.
• In December 1925 it became home to the Newton
  Country Day School, and in 1990 was added to the
  National Register of Historic Places.

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• The window was meant to light the landing of a
  grand staircase, and, by presenting a landscape
  view that receded into the distance, it would
  offer the illusion of extending a necessarily
  confined space.

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• But even in domestic interiors, stained glass
  never entirely lost its religious overtones.
• Tiffany divided this composition into lancet
  windows reminiscent of a medieval cathedral.

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• In keeping with the American landscape tradition,
  the theme of Autumn LandscapeThe River of Life
  also invites a spiritual interpretation.

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• Tiffany generally reserved the traditional
  subject, in which a mountain stream flows through
  the rocks and cascades into a placid foreground
  pool, for memorial windows in churches and
  mausoleums

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• Here, the season enhances the symbolism of a
  lifetime winding to a close, with the sun sinking
  low on a late autumn afternoon.

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• As it happened, the window did become a memorial
  of sorts, for the Boston client died before it
  could be installed in his residence.

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• Autumn Landscape was subsequently sold to the
  Metropolitan Museum of Art where, fortunately it
  was taken from its intended setting of a private
  interior for the privileged few, it became a work
  of art available to the public.

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• Tiffanys ambition was to use glass to create the
  effect of oil or watercolor painting, without
  resorting to the application of enameled
  decoration.

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• To this end, he developed new techniques
• for producing and manipulating colored glass.
• He eventually achieved a range of visual and
  tactile effects that would have been impossible
  with paint alone.

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Autumn Landscape

• Was one of Tiffanys later productions,
• It makes use of nearly every method in Tiffanys
  extensive repertoire
• Mottled glass for the dusky sky
• Confetti glass (with thin flakes of colored glass
• embedded in the surface) for the shifting
  colors of the autumn foliage
• Marbleized glass for the boulders
• Rippled glass for the foreground pool.

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Confetti Glass

• Confetti glass (with thin flakes of colored glass
• embedded in the surface) for the shifting
  colors of the autumn foliage

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• Marbleized glass for the boulders

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• Rippled glass for the foreground pool.

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• To deepen the color and enhance the depth of the
  distant mountains, Tiffany applied layers of
  glass to the back of the window, a technique
  called plating.

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• But as he would have been aware, the full effect
  of the window depended on the intensity of the
  natural light that shone through it to magically
  alter the landscape throughout the day and the
  year.

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On which side of a housenorth, south, east, or
westmight you want to install this window, and
why?

• The south side would receive light all year
• the west side, in the afternoon and evening
• the east, in the morning and
• the north side would never receive direct light.

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• As a window that resembles an elaborately framed
  easel painting, Autumn Landscape fulfills the
  aesthetic movements mission of introducing art
  into daily life.

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• Tiffany concerned himself with the entire range
  of a rooms decorative effects, weaving them into
  a single, harmonious design.

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• He found countless ways to give his art a
  practical purpose,
• Designing everything from books to furniture
• In any medium, Tiffany said, his primary
  consideration had always been simply the pursuit
  of beauty.

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• What do you see first in this window?
• Why is your attention drawn to this area?

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• You will probably see the sun in the center.
• It is the lightest part of the window and
  contains the strongest contrast of light and
  dark.

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• What time of the day is depicted?
• Why will this art look different at different
  times of the day?

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• Because the sun is near the horizon, it is early
  morning or late afternoon.
• The light shining through it will be different
  depending on how high or low the sun is in the
  sky and whether it is a bright or overcast day.

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Essay Question 1

• Stained-glass windows are commonly seen in
  churches, but this window was created for a
  stairwell in a mans private home.
• Why would someone rather have a stained-glass
  window in a house than clear glass?

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Essay Question 2

• How would this landscape make the space of a
  small stairwell feel larger?

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Essay Question 3

• Because the man who commissioned this window died
  before it was installed, it seemed like a
  memorial for him.
• Why are autumn scenes and sunsets often featured
  in memorials to the dead?
• Describe the mood of this scene.