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John Singer Sargent was an American
painter by birth-right. He loved his country yet he spent
most of his life in Europe. He was the most celebrated portraitist
of his time but left it at the very height of his fame to
devote full time to landscape painting, watercolors and public
art.
He was born in Florence, to American parents and traveled
extensively throughout Europe. His parents never settled back
in America, not stepping foot in the States himself until
right before his 21st birthday to retain his citizenship.
He was schooled as a French artist, heavily influenced by
the Impressionist movement, the Spanish Master Velazquez,
the Dutch Master Frans Hals, and his teacher Carolus-Duran
. He was the darling of Paris until the scandal of his Madame
X painting at the 1884 Salon. Discouraged at the rejection,
even considered leaving art at the age of 28, he left Paris
and settled (if that word could ever be used for him) in England
where he reached the height of his fame. To be painted by
Sargent was to be painted by the best.
Although England would be his home, he never stopped traveling
and he never stopped painting. To describe Sargent is to say
that he painted. It was his life and yet he had a deep appreciation
for music and all art forms and went out of his way to promote
other artistsfor this selflessness he was greatly
loved.
Self Portrait,
1907
Extremely bright, extremely gifted, an intense
hard worker, he was the last great generalist. It is hard
to put a label on him for he could master so many different
painting styles. He was an Impressionist, a Classical Portraitist,
a Landscape Artist, a Water Colorist, a Muralist of public
art, and even started sculpting at the last of his life. He
was all of these things and yet he was none of them in total.
He is often passed by, not studied, or dismissed because he
was never a radical artist or trend-setter. He always worked
within the wide, rich textured pallet of known and established
styles. Yet his brilliance was in fusing these elements together
and for this he has never fully gotten credit.
His output was prodigious. Working dawn til dusk in some
caseseven on vacations, and sometimes seven days a week.
Between 1877 (when his work really started taking off) and
1925, he did over 900 oils and more than 2,000 watercolors
along with countless charcoal sketch-portraits and endless
pencil drawings.
He painted two United States presidents, the aristocracy of
Europe, the new and emerging tycoons and barons of
businessRockefeller, Sears, Vanderbilt; and he painted gypsies,
tramps, and street children with the same gusto and passion.
He hiked through the Rocky Mountains with a canvas tent under
pouring rain to paint the beauty of waterfalls, and painted
near the front lines during World War I to capture the horrors
of war. He painted the back alleys of Venice, sleeping gondoliers,
fishing boats and the dusty side streets of Spain. He painted
opulent interiors and vacant Moorish Ruins. He painted the
artists of his timeperformers, poets, dancers, musicians,
and writersRobert Louis Stevenson, and Henry James.
He painted the great generals of the Great War, and the Bedouin
nomads in their camps. He painted grand allegorical murals,
and his friends as they slept.
NOTE: You'll notice many Sargent books are by Richard Ormond.
He is Sargent's grand-nephew.
From 1874 to 1882, John Singer Sargent (18561925) produced
more than 200 paintings and water-colors aside from portraiture,
including figures in landscape settings, architectural studies,
seascapes, subject paintings, and studies after old masters.
From powerful studies of models in Paris in the mid-1870s to
compelling paintings set in Venice in the early 1880s, the works
published in this volume of the catalogue raisonné show
the variety of his aesthetic responses. He worked in the studio
and en plein air, travelling widely during the eight years covered
in this volume and painting in Paris, Brittany, Capri, Spain,
North Africa, and Venice.
This is the first time that Sargents early work has been
mapped so comprehensively. With very few exceptions, this beautifully
produced book illustrates all the pictures under discussion
in color. Each painting, including several which have never
been published before, is documented in depth with full provenance,
exhibition history, and bibliography, and in many cases new
information is provided. The volume also reproduces a wealth
of Sargents preliminary and related drawings and of comparative
works by other artists.
Americans
in Paris 1860-1900 (National Gallery Company) by Kathleen
Adler, Erica E. Hirshler, H. Barbara Weinberg Hardcover: 288
pages Publisher: National Gallery London (March 28, 2006)
As the center of the art world in the late nineteenth century,
Paris was a magnet for American art students and artists. They
flocked to the studios of French artists like Jean-Léon
Gérôme, William Bouguereau, and others, dreamed
of showing their work at the annual Paris Salon, and watched
intently as new styles such as Impressionism began to take hold.
Hardly an American painter was unaffected by developments in
Paris, and even those who chose not to study there wanted their
work to be affirmed by French audiences and taste makers.
This beautifully illustrated book traces the role of American
artists in Paris from the Salon des Refusés, in 1863,
to the emergence of a uniquely American style of painting at
the turn of the century. It includes iconic images by John Singer
Sargent, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, and Winslow
Homer, and by many other artists whose names and work were more
widely known then than now.
Engaging essays written by notable scholars explore why artists
were drawn to Paris, how they responded to what they found there,
and what they retained of their experience. In addition, the
significance of the Expositions Universelles, the French view
of American artists in Paris, and the role these artists played
in shaping the great American collections of modern French painting
are discussed. Featuring more than 100 paintings, the essays
are followed by artists biographies, an illustrated, annotated
list of works, and a complete bibliography.
Sargents reputation is often defined by his remarkable achievements
as a painter of sophisticated society portraits. However, as
this innovative examination of his career reveals, he created
a significant number of childrens portraits and genre paintings
featuring children.
The title of the book makes ironic reference
to Charles Dickenss famous novel Great Expectations,
and is used here to suggest how Sargents paintings
of children related to the expectations associated
with representations of childhood in the art
and literature of Sargents day. The book also
traces how Sargent ultimately advanced childhood
as an artistic subject.
The book contains five essays by three notable
curators and professors of fine arts, is illustrated
with Sargents truly stunning and often lesser-known
paintings of children, and includes Sargent
family photographs, some of which are previously
unpublished.
The story behind the legendary John Singer Sargent
painting that propelled the artist to international
renown but condemned his subject to a life of
public ridicule.
John Singer Sargent's Madame X is one of the
world's best-known portraits. As the Metropolitan's
most frequently requested painting for loans,
it travels to museums around the globe. The
image of "Madame X" decorates book
and magazine covers, greeting cards and screen
savers. She's even been immortalized as a Madame
Alexander doll.
Few people, though, know the fascinating story
behind the painting. "Madame X" was
actually a twenty-three-year-old New Orleans
Creole, Virginie Gautreau, who moved to Paris
and quickly became the "it girl" of
her day. All the leading artists wanted to paint
her, but it was Sargent, a relative nobody,
who won the commission. Gautreau and Sargent
must have recognized in each other a like-minded
hunger for fame.
Unveiled at the 1884 Paris Salon, Gautreau's
portrait did generate the attention she craved-but
it led to infamy rather than stardom. Sargent
had painted one strap of Gautreau's dress dangling
from her shoulder, suggesting, to outraged Parisian
viewers, either the prelude or the aftermath
of sex. Her reputation irreparably damaged,
Gautreau retired from public life, destroying
all the mirrors in her home so she would never
have to look at herself again.
Why had Sargent chosen to portray her in such
a provoc-ative manner? Was the painting, with
the scandal it generated, the machination of
a sexually conflicted man who desired a woman
and a lifestyle he could never possess? Drawing
on documents from private collections and other
previously unexamined materials and featuring
a cast of characters including Oscar Wilde and
Richard Wagner, Strapless is an enthralling
tale of art and celebrity, obsession and betrayal.
John
Singer Sargent: Portraits of the 1890s
by Richard Ormond, Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer
Sargent Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher:
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (November
1, 2002)
This gorgeous book is the second volume of the
definitive catalogue raisonné of the
work of the American painter John Singer Sargent
(1856-1925). It comprises over onehundred and
fifty formal portraits and portrait sketches
in oil and watercolor that he painted between
1889 and 1900. The catalogued works have been
grouped into chronological sections, each with
its own introduction to set the particular group
in context. In addition, an overall introduction
places Sargent in the context of European portraiture
of the past and of his own time.
Each work is documented in depth: entries include
traditional data about the painting or watercolor;
details of the work's provenance, exhibition
history and bibliography; a short biography
of the sitter; a discussion of the circumstances
in which the work was created; and a critical
discussion of its subject matter, style, and
significance in Sargent's career. With very
few exceptions, all the works are reproduced
in color. There is also an illustrated inventory
of Sargent's studio props and accessories and
a cross-referenced checklist of the portraits
in which they appear.
John Esten has assembled a stunning collection
of drawings, paintings, and watercolors by Sargent-many
of them rarely seen-of the friends and family
that accompanied him on these holiday excursions.
In this beautiful book, Trevor Fairbrother argues
that viewing John Singer Sargent as a sensualist
connects otherwise conflicting elements of his
oeuvre and offers a new interpretation of his
life and work. The book is lavishly illustrated
with examples of the artist's oils, watercolors,
and sketches, and it includes a little-known
series of expressive charcoal drawings of male
nudes, here published together in color for
the first time. Published in association with
the Seattle Art Museum.
John Singer Sargent by Carter Ratcliff
Hardcover, 256 pages, Artabras, 1998
An examination of John Singer Sargent's enduring
popularity and the beautiful results of his
life-long devotion to art. Over 300 illustrations,
113 in full-color. 11" x 13".
John
Singer Sargent: The Male Nudes by John
Singer Sargent, John Esten, National Gallery
of Art(U.S.), Donna Hassler Hardcover,
96 pages (May 1999) Universe Pub
Published on occasion of the major Sargent retrospective
traveling to the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston in 1999, John Singer Sargent: The Male
Nudes brings to light a fascinating portion
of Sargent's work long hidden from the public
eye.
Beginning in his adolescence, and throughout
his distinguished career, John Singer Sargent,
the celebrated painter of patricians, produced
a superbly rendered, uninhibited book of work
that was rarely seen and never exhibited: the
male nudes. Models were a significant aspect
of the great painter's profession, whether they
were commission-producing society "sitters"
or professional models used as reference for
his three Boston mural projects or works created
for his private enjoyment--one young Italian
model stayed in the artist's employ for nearly
twenty-six years. Sargent's enduring subject
was capturing the "human form divine"
in portraits of the fashionable and famous and
the absolute male.
Over the last century, these little-known works
have been dispersed to museum archives and private
collections throughout the United States and
Great Britain. John Esten has unearthed the
most extraordinary of these images, ranging
from vibrant watercolors and oil paintings to
charcoal studies, published here for the first
time in a single volume.
This first volume of a definitive collection
of the works in oil, watercolor, and pastel
of beloved painter John Singer Sargent catalogs
his portraits from 1874 to 1887. Volume two
will include portraits painted from 1890 until
the end of the artist's career. The entire collection
will bring together nearly 600 portraits and
some 1,600 subject pictures, landscapes, and
three mural cycles. This volume features 180
color and 80 b&w illustrations.
Sargent:
The Late Landscapesby Hilliard T. Goldfarb,
Erica E. Hirshler, T. J. Jackson Lears
Paperback, 128 pages (May 1999) Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum
Sargent by Elaine Kilmurray, Richard
Ormond Hardcover, 288 pages Princeton
Univ Press, December, 1998
The remarkable portraits for which John Singer
Sargent is most famous are only one aspect of
a career that included landscapes, watercolors,
figure subjects, and murals. Even within portraiture,
his style ranged from bold experiments to studied
formality. And the subjects of his paintings
were as varied as his styles, including the
leaders of fashionable society, rural laborers,
city streets, remote mountains, and the front
lines of World War I. This beautiful book surveys
and evaluates the extraordinary range of Sargent's
work, and reproduces 150 of his paintings in
color. It accompanies a spectacular international
exhibition--the first major retrospective of
the artist's career since the memorial exhibitions
that followed his death.
Sargent (1856-1925) was a genuinely international
figure. Born of American parents, he grew up
in Europe and forged his early reputation in
Paris. Later, he established himself in England
and the United States as the leading portraitist
of the day, and traveled widely in North Africa
and the Middle East. Contributors to this book
assess Sargent's career in three essays. Richard
Ormond presents a biographical sketch and, in
a second essay, reviews Sargent's development
as an artist. Mary Crawford Volk explores his
thirty-year involvement with painting murals--in
particular the works at the Boston Public Library
and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts that Sargent
regarded as his greatest achievement.
The book arranges Sargent's paintings into sections
that reflect every phase and aspect of his career.
We encounter, for example, such famous early
works as Oyster Gatherers of Cancale, Sargent's
robust and brilliantly lit scene of fishing
life in Brittany. We see many of his greatest
American and English portraits, including his
daringly posed portrait of Bostonian Isabella
Stewart Gardner and his audacious painting of
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, which caused a sensation
in London in 1893. The book also includes important
late works such as Gassed, his monumental painting
of soldiers blinded by mustard gas on the western
front, and many of his ambitious murals in Boston.
Sargent is a visually stunning, beautifully
written, and perceptive work on one of the most
important and admired artists of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries.
By the time John Singer Sargent turned thirty
in 1886, he already commanded an international
reputation in the art world, creating a stream
of works for exhibition that people eagerly
awaited and discussed at length. Henry James
noted that Sargent`s talent offered "the
slightly `uncanny` spectacle" of an artist
on the threshold of his career who in fact had
nothing more to learn. This book explores how
the young American painter in just over a decade
jumped from apprenticeship to wide acclaim,
how he presented himself and his works, and
how he sought to shape public perception of
his talent.
The Age of Elegance by John Singer
Sargent Paperback, 160 pages, Pocket
edition Phaidon Press Inc, 1996
This book shows how John Singer Sargent's stylish
paintings of elegant ladies and sophisticated
gentlemen reflect the charm, opulence, and assurance
of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Quotations
form Sargent's friend and mentor Henry James,
capture the place of the American ex-patriot
in European society of that period.
Sargent Watercolors by Donelson F.
Hoopes Reissue Edition Paperback, Published
by Watson-Guptill Pubns, September 1984
Sketches VI: Sargent by Brooklyn
Museum, Hardcover, Published by Universe Pub,
1991
John Singer Sargent by Patricia Hills
Hardcover, Published by Harry N. Abrams,
1986
A lavishly illustrated group of scholarly essays
published by the Whitney Museum as the catalog
of the retrospective of this 19th-century Euro-American
society painter. Hills contributes three fine
studies on Sargent's style and sensibility,
the late subject pictures, and draftsmanship.
Other specialists cover Sargent in Venice, in
Paris and London, his Impressionism, the late
portraits, and the watercolors. Stanley Olson's
contribution on Sargent's family is the most
outstanding. Olson remarks that at his birth
the artist received "his mother's well-thumbed
Baedeker , and not a silver spoon, for he began
his life as he ended itas a tourist." Highly
recommended as a complement to Carter Ratcliff's
John Singer Sargent (Abbeville Pr., 1982). Mary
Hamel-Schwulst, Art Department, Goucher College,
Towson, Md. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information,
Inc.
Collection of portraits, selected from public
and private holdings by art historian Trevor
J. Fairbrother, reveal the technical skill and
intuitive eye for which American portrait painter
John Singer Sargent is renowned. Drawings in
pencil, pastels and charcoala lesser-known
aspect of Sargents oeuvreare shown.
List of Plates. Introduction. Captions.
Arriving at their mature styles independently
of one another, the renowned American expatriate
painters James McNeill Whistler and John Singer
Sargent and the British artist Philip Wilson
Steer are often credited with bringing modern
art to London near the end of the 19th century.
Inspired by the lively brushwork of painters
from Velázquez to Monet, each of these
artists developed a distinctive approach to
Impressionism, utilizing spontaneously applied
strokes of paint and closely modulated colors
to caputre the effects of light as it played
across the fingure and landscape.
This selection of masterworks by the three artists
reveals the stylistic links that give evidence
of their shared aesthetic lineage. Essays by
Tate curator David Fraser Jenkins and art historian
Avis Berman provide insight into their lives
and works within the cultural milieu of fin-de-siècle
London, including the experiences of the young
and somewhat eccentric aesthete W. Graham Robertson.
Sargent's
Venice by Richard Ormond, Warren Adelson Hardcover
Publisher: Yale University Press; 1st edition (January 19, 2007)
John Singer Sargent returned to Venice many times during his
life, endlessly fascinated with this enchanting city. In paintings
filled with vivid colors and dazzling light, he sought to capture
its vitality and unique ambience, often working while afloat
in a gondola. This gorgeously illustrated book presents nearly
seventy of Sargents oil and watercolor paintings of Venice,
many of them famous but others only rarely seen. The book also
contains fascinating new photographs of actual sites depicted
in Sargents paintings.
Sargents early works in Venice were created in 1880-1882,
and he undertook a second, larger body of work in the city during
visits from 1900 to 1913. His responses to Veniceits local
figures, its buildings and waterways, its extraordinary lightreflect
his changing interests over time as well as his lifelong ability
to extend his own reach as a creative artist. The book considers
various aspects of Sargents work and milieu in a series
of informative essays by international scholars. They discuss
the evolution of Sargents style, the topography of his
work in Venice, his connections with Henry James and other Americans
in Venice, Italian artists in Venice in the nineteenth century,
and American artists in Venice in the nineteenth century.
Reader review: As many know, American
painter John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925) was
not only a gifted landscape artist but was also
recognized as the outstanding society portraitist
of his day. One often thinks of him in connection
with his painting of Madame X and the scandal
that ensued. However, we are reminded of a much
different Sargent when we view his portraits
of children, so innocent, so appealing.
Sargent, of course, is not the only artist noted
for his children's portraits. James McNeill
Whistler rendered a stunning full length portrait
of Miss Cicely Alexander, the daughter of a
London banker and art collector. Renoir left
to the world warm canvases depicting his family,
Thomas Eakins immortalized children at play,
and Joshua Reynolds portrayed an angelic child
with "A Little Girl.."
These artists and more are represented in Children
of the Gilded Era: Portraits by Sargent, Renoir,
Cassatt, and their Contemporaries by Barbara
Gallati, well known lecturer and Curator of
American Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
More than a collection of memorable paintings
of children this lovely volume represents how
children were seen at the end of the 19th century.
At that time, one's place in society was often
undergirded by commissioned portraits. Thus,
the children were seen not only through the
artists' eyes but as the family wished them
to be regarded and seen.
With 80 illustrations, each accompanied by a
brief sketch, and seven succinct essays the
reader is offered pictorial and narrative insight
into how yesterday's society viewed children.
Gail Cooke
Sargent's
Women by Adeslon Warren Paperback:
152 pages Publisher: Frances Lincoln (January
1, 2004) John
Singer Sargent: The Later Portraits
by Richard Ormond, Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer
Sargent Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher:
Yale University Press (October 1, 2003)
This sumptuous book is the third volume of the
definitive catalogue raisonné of the
work of the American painter John Singer Sargent
(1856-1925). Comprising over two hundred portraits
and portrait sketches in oil and watercolor
painted between 1900 and the artist's death
in 1925, this book completes the trilogy of
portrait volumes. The catalogued works have
been grouped into two chronological sections,
each with an introduction that sets the particular
group in context. There is also a section of
undated portraits and an appendix listing previously
unrecorded works. Each work is documented in
depth: entries include traditional data about
the painting or watercolor; details of the work's
provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography;
a short biography of the sitter; a discussion
of the circumstances in which the work was created;
and a critical discussion of its subject matter,
style, and significance in Sargent's career.
Most of the works are reproduced in color. There
is also an illustrated inventory of Sargent's
studio props and accessories and a cross-referenced
checklist of the portraits in which they appear.
John Singer Sargent: The Life of an Artist
(Artist Biographies) by Eshel Kreiter, Marc
Zabludoff, John Singer Sargent Reading
level: Ages 4-8 Library Binding: 48 pages Publisher:
Enslow Elementary (December 2002)
John Singer Sargent by Edmund Swinglehurst
Hardcover, 144 pages (August 1, 2001)
Thunder Bay Press
Never has an artist been more exalted or vilified
throughout his career and afterwards. John Singer
Sargent was best known for his remarkable portraits,
mostly high-society commissions, which many
of his critics hailed as mere "art applied
to social requirement and social ambition."
However, no one can deny the opulence with which
he portrayed his wealthy patrons, nor the luminosity
of his other subject matter, be it foreign landscapes,
people or architecture.
Like a suave butler polishing the egos of his
wealthy patrons and sitters, Sargent turned
out 700 portraits varying greatly in quality,
notes Olson. Tired of the tedium of portraiture,
he longed to do still lifes and outdoor scenes
but got sidetracked into painting huge, mediocre
murals that mischanneled his talents. This startling,
unconventional view of the chronicler of the
Edwardian Age emerges from Olson's richly detailed,
thoroughly researched biography. The son of
a willful, hypochondriac mother and a taciturn,
pessimistic father, Sargent became a workaholic,
an outsider, a born observer eager for fame
but let down by it. Henry James cleared a path
for Sargent to settle in London when he tired
of Paris, and the painter's friend Monet taught
him to work outdoors on a "floating studio,"
but through it all Sargent remained strangely
elusive, a loner, unfulfilled in his role. Olson
(Elinor Wylie: A Life Apart follows Sargent
on his jaunts to Morocco and Venice and shows
how a short burst of communal life in the Cotswolds
art colony pushed him closer to arch-heretic
Whistler. Photos. Copyright 1987 Reed
Business Information, Inc.
An expatriate American living in England, John
Singer Sargent was an immensely gifted artist
and
the leading international portraitist of his
day. He produced his magnificent oil paintings
of the
social elite after lengthy preparations that
included numerous studies and sketches. American
Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art: John Singer Sargent presents
the Met's collection of four sketchbooks and
337 single sheets by Sargent, from rough to
highly finished designs. Many of the watercolors
and a handful of the drawings are brilliant,
but they are lesser works than the great paintings;
this book is an important art-historical study
rather than an art book.
A brilliant painter of society portraits, John
Singer Sargent also devoted many years at the
height of his career to a project of an entirely
different order: an ambitious, multi-media decoration
titled Triumph of Religion (1890-1919) for the
Boston Public Library. The library cycle Sargent
imagined as his most important work, however,
would ultimately remain unfinished, quietly
abandoned in the face of religious opposition,
one critical painting short of completion. Truncation
dramatically altered possible readings of Triumph,
redirecting its narrative energies and generating
new meanings in tension with the idea Sargent
had proposed. In Painting Religion in Public,
Sally Promey tells the story of an artist of
international stature and the complex and consuming
pictorial program he pursued in Boston. Highly
celebrated in its day, with individual panels
retaining immense popularity even in the years
of discord, this artistic project and its constituent
images tell us much about broad cultural and
political exchanges concerning the public representation
of religious content in the United States.
Sargent's library decoration attracted the attention
of multiple audiences and engaged concurrent
debates about class, race, art, and religion.
Representatives of various religious and cultural
backgrounds hailed portions of the cycle as
indicative of the strength of their own positions,
and reproductions of the images appeared in
everything from books and encyclopedias to stained
glass and public pageantry. Promey analyzes
the conception and production of the cycle,
persuasively demonstrating that Triumph of Religion,
far from promoting a narrowly sectarian version
of religious practice, represented instead Sargent's
public recommendation of the privacy of modern
belief. The artist recast contemporary religion
as spirituality, she argues, linking it not
with institutions and dogma but with personal
subjectivity. For Sargent, this ideal was a
sign of Western, especially American, progress.
Carefully reconstructing patterns of reception
in an increasingly diverse religious climate,
and exploring the extent and character of Sargent's
personal and artistic investment, Promey boldly
illuminates the work Sargent hoped to make his
masterpiece. At the same time, she enriches
understanding of religious images in public
places and popular imagination.
Interpreting Sargent by Elizabeth
Prettejohn, Elizabeth Prettejohn Paperback,
80 pages (January 1999) Stewart Tabori & Chang
Reader review (1999): This wonderful
paperback is a great buy for anyone who attended
the National Gallery exhibit in Washington D.C.
recently. The quality of the prints do a great
job of capturing the beauty of Sargeant's work.
The text is somewhat "high brow" for
the layperson, but gives an interesting perspective
regarding the works included in the exhibition.
The book is an excellent way to remember the
exhibit without spending a lot of money on a
coffee-table type of book.
The Watercolors of John Singer Sargent by
Carl Little, John Singer Sargent, Arnold Skolnick
(Editor) Hardcover, 160 pages (March
1999) Univ California Press
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) stands among
the greatest of watercolor painters, along with
J.M.W. Turner, Winslow Homer, and other masters
of this difficult medium. Watercolor was more
than a distraction from the portrait and mural
commissions Sargent labored over; after 1900,
watercolor became central to his artistic vision.
His aquarelles are, simply stated, masterworks.
Portraits, interiors, landscapes, architectural
studiesSargent's work in watercolor offers a
great variety of subject matter, ranging from
Arab gypsies to World War I soldiers, to masterful
depictions of Venetian churches, to Florida
swamp alligators. Sargent carried his watercolors
on his travels; They were ideally suited to
capturing the scene, the light, the air, wherever
he found himself. This book serves as a record
of his travels, featuring the paintings he produced
in Palestine, Northern Africa, the Canadian
Rockies, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and Greece.
Among specific locales were the islands of Majorca
and Corfu; Florence, Venice, Carrara, Lake Garda,
and Rome; the Alps; Lake O'Hara; the coast of
Maine and the Miami River. Sargent's bold and
often experimental use of the medium, which
sometimes led to semi-abstract images, compels
admiration among contemporary painters as well
as museum goers today. In addition to placing
Sargent's accomplishments in the context of
his life and time, Carl Little discusses the
artist's extraordinary watercolor technique.
Sargent by Elaine Kilmurray, Richard
Ormond Hardcover Publisher: Tate Gallery
Publishing Ltd (October, 1998)
John Singer Sargent by Kate F. Jennings,
John Singer Sargent Paperback, 112 pages,
Knickerbocker Press, 1998
The remarkable portraits for which John Singer
Sargent is most famous are only one aspect of
a career that included landscapes, watercolors,
figure subjects, and murals. Even within portraiture,
his style ranged from bold experiments to studied
formality. And the subjects of his paintings
were as varied as his styles, including the
leaders of fashionable society, rural laborers,
city streets, remote mountains, and the front
lines of World War I. This beautiful book surveys
and evaluates the extraordinary range of Sargent's
work, and reproduces 150 of his paintings in
color. It accompanies a spectacular international
exhibitionthe first major retrospective
of the artist's career since the memorial exhibitions
that followed his death.
Sargent (1856-1925) was a genuinely international
figure. Born of American parents, he grew up
in Europe and forged his early reputation in
Paris. Later, he established himself in England
and the United States as the leading portraitist
of the day, and traveled widely in North Africa
and the Middle East. Contributors to this book
assess Sargent's career in three essays. Richard
Ormond presents a biographical sketch and, in
a second essay, reviews Sargent's development
as an artist. Mary Crawford Volk explores his
thirty-year involvement with painting murals--in
particular the works at the Boston Public Library
and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts that Sargent
regarded as his greatest achievement.
The book arranges Sargent's paintings into sections
that reflect every phase and aspect of his career.
We encounter, for example, such famous early
works as Oyster Gatherers of Cancale, Sargent's
robust and brilliantly lit scene of fishing
life in Brittany. We see many of his greatest
American and English portraits, including his
daringly posed portrait of Bostonian Isabella
Stewart Gardner and his audacious painting of
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, which caused a sensation
in London in 1893. The book also includes important
late works such as Gassed, his monumental painting
of soldiers blinded by mustard gas on the western
front, and many of his ambitious murals in Boston.
Sargent is a visually stunning, beautifully
written, and perceptive work on one of the most
important and admired artists of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries.
Six splendid full-color depictions of elegant
society ladies by John Singer Sargent (18561925)
appear in this collection: The Acheson Sisters,
Mrs. Henry White, Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children,
Millicent, Dutchess of Sutherland, Lady Agnew
of Lochnaw, and Miss Helen Dunham.
Sargent Abroad: Figures and Landscapes
by Warren Adelson (Editor), Donna Seldin Janis,
Elaine Kilmurray Hardcover, 256 pages
1st edition Abbeville Press, Inc., 1997
Famous for his society portraits, Sargent is
revealed here as a painter of brilliant watercolors
depicting Mediterranean landscapes, Venetian
palaces, Alpine vistas, Italian gardens, Bedouin
encampments . . . luminous reproductions.
I. Beginnings: A Career in Paris II. Instinct
for the Esoteric III. Fame and Scandal as a
Parisian Portraitist IV. Decision and Indecision
V. International Success in the 1890s VI. The
Informal and the Personal VII. Canonized and
Criticized VIII. Aftermath: Placing Sargent
in the History of Art
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