In the midst of wall and window decorations La Farge found little time for easel-painting--something he regretted but could not help. Twice, however, he broke away from the shop and went upon long trips. The first was to Japan with Henry Adams in 1886. Out of that came many water-color sketches and drawings, besides a charming book, _An Artist’s Letters from Japan_. To some the book is of more interest than the drawings. The temple-doors and interiors and Buddhas of his sketches are, no doubt, truthfully illustrative, and that is perhaps their failing as pictures. The model was too apparent and the artist not so much in evidence as could be wished for. His own negative definition of art applies just here: “It is never the _mere representation_ of what we see.” Some of the mountain landscapes, however, are very fine, and his garden bits recall the early La Farge of the pond-lilies and the “Paradise Valley.” [Illustration: “The Three Kings,” by John La Farge. In the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.] His second long trip was again with Henry Adams and this time to the South Seas. He was gone for a year or more, from 1890 and on, and out of this trip came another engaging book, _Reminiscences of the South Seas_, besides many water-color drawings. The water-colors were again illustrative, but perhaps they were more animated than the Japanese series, had to do more intimately with the island life, and were often strikingly picturesque in theme and movement. With them came also a number of small sea-pieces showing bays, harbors, and islands done with the greatest simplicity and yet having a satin-and-silk quality about them quite indescribable in its beauty. These silvery sea-pieces are in the same class with La Farge’s early violets and roses--things that are exquisite in their surface texture and their color beauty. His mountain landscapes of the South Seas are again superb in their greens and blues. A love and a gift for landscape always remained with him, and one often wonders, had he devoted himself to this alone, what new revelations of the world about us he might have handed down in art. The groups of natives in dances or games or ceremonies naturally attract the most attention in the South Seas water-colors. Technically they are interesting because of their hark back to Delacroix. Not only the reds, blues, greens, and flesh notes are like Delacroix, but the drawing of the hands and feet, the movement of arms and legs are much like that master. All his life La Farge had carried that impress about with him. A few years before he died one of his pictures, at an exhibition or sale, was so like a Delacroix that at first, from across the room, I thought it by the great romanticist. Some time later in mentioning the fact to La Farge he nodded his head and said that he had been very much influenced by Delacroix and no doubt unconsciously did things in his style or manner.