La Farge considered this composition his masterpiece in stained glass. John La Farge was one of the first American artists to respond to Japanese art. Inspired by the flowing contours, asymmetrical compositions, and color harmonies of the East, he fused these elements with Western artistic motifs, reminiscent of renaissance painting. La Farge, who invented modern opalescent glass, called this window a “picture work in glass.” One of the most renowned late 19th-century American artists, John La Farge began his career as a painter but is best remembered for his elaborate, richly colored stained-glass windows. As a friend of architects and sculptors who developed the style known as the American Renaissance for its borrowings from 14th- and 15th-century Italian art, La Farge designed entire decorative schemes in painting, sculpture, and stained glass for many of the major architectural projects of his day, often in competition with his better-known contemporary Louis Comfort Tiffany. La Farge considered Spring his masterpiece in stained glass, and technically the window is a tour de force: the face and torso of the young woman are painted and fired on the largest single sheet of glass ever used in a stained-glass window, and the rich colors, including the milky, opalescent glass that was La Farge's invention, are his most varied and intricately designed. Few other works better express the combination of allegorical subject, realistic treatment of the figure, historical associations, and rich effect that characterized the American Renaissance style. Darrel Sewell, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 297. [http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/71981.html?utm_medium=social media&utm_source=tumblr&utm_campaign=programs&utm_content=Spotlight_John La Farge] La Farge experimented with problems of shifting and deteriorating color, especially in the medium of stained glass. His work rivaled the beauty of medieval windows and added new resources by his use of opalescent glass and by his original methods of layering and welding the glass. Opalescent glass had been used for centuries in tableware, but it had never before been formed into flat sheets for use in stained-glass windows and other decorative objects. For his early experiments, La Farge had had to custom-order flat sheets of opalescent glass from a Brooklyn glass manufacturer.[12] La Farge apparently introduced Tiffany to the new use of opalescent glass sometime in the mid 1870s, showing him his experiments.[12] Sometime in the late 1870s or early 1880s, however, relations between the artists soured, probably due to a lawsuit between the two men.... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_La_Farge#Stained_glass]