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John La Farge

Fortune

1901
graphite

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In the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland · as of July 2026

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FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

When commissioned in 1901 to make a stained glass window for the Frick office building in Pittsburgh, John La Farge produced this strange design of Fortune balancing precariously on a wheel—an emblem of the fickleness of fortune. The hazy, mysterious handling of the face of the central figure recalls contemporary French Symbolist painters such as Odilon Redon (1840–1916).

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