Bancel La Farge

Like many another Centurion, Bancel La Farge was entranced by the paintings that his father John La Farge brought back in the ’nineties from the then unexploited South Seas, and heard that incomparable talker describe the colors, the soft airs, and the perfumes of the Islands. At the Twelfth Night Revels of 1899, Bancel, as a long, lean Samoan chief, with his skin mahogany stained, came attired in leaves and feathers and a headdress ruddy with hibiscus. Bancel did not journey with John La Farge in the Pacific, but followed his far more arduous trail in art. For nearly a decade he was an assistant to his father in the famous studio at No. 51 West Tenth Street. He lived in Europe for twelve years and carried on extensive researches in Byzantine mosaics. Stained glass and mosaics by Bancel La Farge delight worshippers in many chapels, churches, and cathedrals throughout this country. A Centurion who called on him at his studio in Mount Carmel, Connecticut, said recently that at each visit the versatile artist seemed to be working in a different medium—a screen in oils, a design in wrought iron, a pastel sketch, or a lovely landscape in water color. A few years ago Bancel brought Te Rangi Hiroa (Peter H. Buck, M.D., to us) then chief anthropologist of the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, to the Century, where the Maori rubbed noses with the presiding officer Henry E. Crampton and edified us with a lecture on Polynesia. Bancel was one of three Centurion sons of John La Farge, and on one occasion almost inaudibly expressed his great pride in the fact that two sons of his own, Bancel and Thomas, were members of the Century. Perhaps the least articulate of all the La Farge tribe of fascinating talkers, Bancel La Farge could be charming in a few words.

Geoffrey Parsons
1938 Century Memorials