Almost the whole of his theory of art lies in that sentence. It will apply to his painting of water-lilies as well as to his figures or landscapes. He was after a type of the species--something typical and universal rather than something odd or singular. Perhaps the most notable result of his theory and practice at this time was the landscape called “Paradise Valley,” painted between 1866 and 1868. The material for the “Paradise Valley” was found along the Rhode Island coast near Newport. It is a bare, almost treeless, scene, looking down toward the sea, and is cut up somewhat in the middle distance by the angle lines of stone fences. There is nothing about it of “the view,” nothing that a Hudson River painter would have looked at the second time; yet La Farge added beauty to its bare truth in such degree that it became a masterpiece. All of the painter’s studies in light and line were put into it and yet kept from attracting too much attention in the exposition. And all of the infinite variety of tone and color common to the Atlantic shore landscape were added and blended together as one. The type as a whole emerged--the universal came out of the commonplace. A more perfect piece of work, a more beautiful picture of landscape, had not then, and has not since, been produced in American art. Of its kind it is unequalled. [Illustration: _Copyright by John La Farge._ “Paradise Valley,” by John La Farge. In the Collection of General Thornton K. Lothrop.] The last time I saw this landscape was many years ago at an exhibition in the gallery of the Century Club. It held the place of honor on the wall, and I was looking at it, praising it unstintedly to a friend standing beside me. After I had exhausted my adjectives, I became aware of some one in the room behind me. I turned and saw La Farge standing there. Whether or not he had overheard me I did not know, but there being nothing to conceal, I told him just what I had been saying to my companion. He smiled and bowed and seemed greatly pleased. He was always too polite to question the compliments of his admirers, and much too broadminded to scoff at praise, however unintelligent he might think it. But the point of my story is further along. After his telling me how he came to paint the landscape and what he had sought to make out of it, I asked him why he had not continued with work of that kind--why he had not painted more Paradise Valleys. His answer was that he had done a number of landscapes similar in character but that no one seemed to care for them. There was no audience, no demand for them, and, worst of all, no one would buy them. He was forced to do something that would produce a revenue. That seemed to me at the time deplorable, but perhaps it was not all sheer loss to art, for his lack of pecuniary success with easel pictures probably had much to do with his taking up mural decoration and glass-work.