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Louis Comfort Tiffany
The Pottery Market at Nuremberg, ca 1892
Son of Charles Tiffany, founder of Tiffany & Company, Louis Comfort Tiffany launched his career in 1866 as a painter, studying first with American George Inness before training abroad in Paris. Following sojourns to Spain, North Africa, and the Near East, Tiffany returned to the United States in the early 1870s, but his attention soon shifted to decorative arts. By century's end, the talented entrepreneur operated his own firms and enjoyed international fame as a top designer of leaded-glass windows and lamps as well as pottery, mosaics, jewelry, and furniture. Other outstanding examples of his work are on view nearby and in the museum's Sydney and Frances Lewis Decorative Arts Galleries.
Less known today are Tiffany's endeavors in painting. They, too, reveal the artist's fascination with various materials and surfaces. This canvas, for example, pictures a German street in which a vendor and her customers are nearly enveloped by gleaming crockery and metalwork. Tiffany exhibited it at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The painting also carried the alternative title The Pottery Market at Wurzberg. |