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
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).