Fortune
Medium
graphite
Dimensions
27.7 × 20 cm
Classification
Drawing
Department
Drawings
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of William G. Mather
Accession Number
1950.316
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
male
About this artwork
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).