John Singer Sargent: Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors.
(John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), born of American parents...)
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), born of American parents in Florence, was the most brilliant portrait painter of his age. Extraordinary manual dexterity, keen observation and detachment were qualities that combined to make his work both versatile and vivid. This book exemplifies this and features even his landscapes, which were little known in his lifetime but now considered among his finest achievements. This book also provides a full and authoritative account of Sargent's work, his life, and achievement as an artist.
Sargent Portrait Drawings: 42 Works by John Singer Sargent (Dover Art Library)
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Portraiture is a demanding art requiring the artist to ...)
Portraiture is a demanding art requiring the artist to capture a likeness and render it revealing some hint of the personality behind the image. A two-pronged task, it requires great technical skill and an intuitive eye. In both these respects, John Singer Sargent stands out as a portrait artist of major stature.
Born in 1856 in Florence of American parents, Sargent showed artistic aptitude at an early age and was enrolled at the Academia delle Belle Arti in that city. Later he studied with Parisian artist Carolus Duran, acquiring the loose, painterly style for which he is renowned. International acclaim as a portrait artist came early in his life and followed him throughout his career.
Sargent's portraits done in oil are well known; they appear in major museums throughout the world. A lesser-known but no less respected aspect of his oeuvre, his portrait drawings are the focus of this collection. Included here are early works in pencil and pastels, and later renderings in charcoal, a medium Sargent favored after 1910. They have been selected from both public and private collections by art historian Trevor J. Fairbrother and attest to Sargent's technical skill, versatility, and dexterity in three different mediums.
In addition, these works reveal Sargent's ability to treat a diverse group of subjects; he handles the languorous beauties of the Edwardian age, members of the aristocracy, and the great literary and artistic figures of his day with equal virtuosity, capturing their characteristic mood and style. This collection includes portraits of Lord and Lady Spencer, Henry James, William Butler Yeats, Vaslav Nijimsky, Tamara Karsavina, Dame Ethel Smyth, and Jascha Heifetz.
Artists, students, historians, and lovers of portraiture will appreciate this selection of drawings by Sargent. Anyone interested in trying his hand at portraiture will find this volume both instructional and inspirational.
John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes 1908–1913: The Complete Paintings, Volume VIII (The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)
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The penultimate volume of the acclaimed catalogue raiso...)
The penultimate volume of the acclaimed catalogue raisonné showcases paintings of some of Sargent’s favorite places and people
After John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) determined to curtail his internationally successful portrait practice, he had more freedom to paint where and what he wanted. Volume VIII of the John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonné transports us to the artist’s most beloved locations, often with his friends and family. In the paintings featured here, Sargent returned to subjects that had always held deep personal connections and artistic challenges: mountains, streams, rocks and torrents, figures in repose, architecture and gardens, boats and shipping. He had known and painted the Alps since childhood, and his new Alpine studies make up the greatest number of works in this book.
Beautifully designed, this volume represents a continuation in organization and presentation of the high standards that mark the series, and documents 299 works in oil and watercolor. Each painting is catalogued with full provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography. Wherever possible, works are illustrated in color; some are accompanied by related drawings and comparative studies by Sargent’s fellow artists. Contemporary photographs pinpoint the places and views that Sargent painted.
(WINNER of the W. E. Fischelis Award from the Victorian So...)
WINNER of the W. E. Fischelis Award from the Victorian Society in America.
Accompanying a major exhibition, this is the first book devoted to the career of this renowned American painter through his brilliant portraits. John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was one of the leading painters of his generation, whose captivating portraits are universally admired for their insight into character, radiance of light and color, and painterly fluency and immediacy. This unprecedented book showcases Sargent’s cosmopolitan career in a new light—through his bold portraits of artists, writers, actors, and musicians, many of them his close friends—giving us a picture of the artist as an intellectual and connoisseur of the music, art, and literature of his day. Whether depicted in well-appointed interiors or en plein air, the cast of characters includes many famous subjects, among them Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, Gabriel Fauré, Vaslav Nijinsky, W. B. Yeats, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Henry James. Structured thematically and according to the places Sargent worked and lived—Paris, London, New York, Italy, and the Alps—this book unites informative essays by noted scholars with a wealth of imagery to offer fresh insights into Sargent’s life and work.
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This sumptuous book is the third volume of the definiti...)
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 was an American artist and mural painter.
Background
He was born on January 12, 1856 in Florence, Italy. He was the son of Dr. FitzWilliam Sargent, a native of Gloucester, Massachussets, who attained prominence as a physician in Philadelphia, and of Mary Newbold (Singer) Sargent of the latter city. On the paternal side the family came of English Puritan stock from Devonshire. His mother's ancestry is traced back to Caspar Singer, who came from Alsace-Lorraine to America about 1730, and to the Newbolds, who were from Yorkshire. In 1854 FitzWilliam Sargent was persuaded by his wife, a woman of means and culture, and an excellent musician, to give up his practice and go to Italy.
His parents wandered from place to place during his childhood. Four daughters were born to them, two of whom died, leaving to John two younger sisters, Emily and Violet, who eventually survived him; a younger brother died in 1869. His father saw John as a future admiral in the United States navy, but this plan was thwarted by the boy's manifest bent, which was sagely abetted by his mother. His first crude essays in drawing were made under her supervision.
Education
He received some elementary lessons at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he got a prize.
In 1874, on the first attempt, Sargent passed the rigorous exam required to gain admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, the premier art school in France. He took drawing classes, which included anatomy and perspective, and gained a silver prize.
In October, at the age of eighteen, he entered the atelier of Carolus Duran. He was not only the cleverest student in the class; he soon bid fair to outstrip his accomplished master. This precocious virtuosity was not altogether pleasing to Carolus, and a time came when there was a certain coolness between master and pupil. Nevertheless, Sargent always recognized his debt to the teaching of Carolus Duran.
Honorary degrees were conferred on Sargent by the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, and Pennsylvania.
Career
He made sketches in the Boboli Gardens and in the suburbs. Wherever he went he made careful drawings from nature. At Nice (1862), in the Pyrenees (1865), in Spain (1868), in Rome (1869), at Dresden and in Switzerland (1872), his pencil was never idle. Finally, in the summer of 1874, the family moved to Paris, and his career as a painter was definitively decided upon.
Sargent was twenty years old when he made his first visit to the United States (1876), in company with his mother and his sister Emily. His Americanism has been the subject of much debate; those who knew him best testified to his lifelong loyalty to the country of his fathers.
Returning to France in the autumn, he painted his "Gitana, " now in the Metropolitan Museum, and the "Rehearsal of the Pasdeloup Orchestra at the Cirque d'Hiver" (Boston Art Museum). In 1877 he sent his first picture to the Salon, a portrait of Miss Watts. He passed the summer at Cancale, at a country house near Lyons, and in Switzerland. In 1878 he made his early portrait, that of Mrs. H. F. Hadden, whose sister posed for the full-length figure called "The Lady with the Rose, " exhibited at the Salon of 1881.
In the fall of 1878 he spent several weeks at Capri, painting with his usual zest. In 1879 his portrait of Carolus Duran appeared; also the portrait of Robert de Civrieux and his dog (Boston Art Museum), "Luxembourg Gardens at Twilight" (Minneapolis Institute of Art), and a replica of the latter work which went into the great collection of John G. Johnson at Philadelphia.
He made his second trip to Spain in 1879, and in January 1880 paid his first visit to Morocco. The Spanish journey resulted in the production of "El Jaleo, " one of the masterpieces of his early period, now in Fenway Court, Boston; several pictures of the Alhambra; a group of fine copies after Velasquez; and the beautiful "Spanish Courtyard" of the McCagg collection.
Following the Spanish and Moroccan sojourn of 1880 and a visit to Venice, came a period of pleasant activity to which belong the portraits of the Boit children (Boston Art Museum), the Misses Vickers, and Mrs. Henry White, and the thrice-famous "Madame Gautreau" (Metropolitan Museum), around which centered a veritable tempest of unaccountable abuse when it was first exhibited in Paris. The few sane critics were powerless to offset the storm of disparagement. Sargent was astonished and hurt. The outcry was in fact much ado about nothing. So far as press criticism was concerned, he was but turning from Scylla to Charybdis.
He was twenty-eight when, in 1885, he established himself in the Tite Street studio which was to become the scene of his greatest triumphs. The first of these came from the picture called "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, " painted at Broadway, Worcestershire, 1884-86, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887. It is now in the Tate Gallery. It was the first of a long series of pictures of children in which the artist revealed the most tender and lovable side of his nature.
In 1887 Sargent was called to the United States to paint some portraits, among them those of Mrs. H. G. Marquand, Mrs. Charles E. Inches, and Mrs. John L. Gardner. The first exhibition of his works ever held was opened at the St. Botolph Club, Boston, in December 1887. It contained several of the above-mentioned portraits, which had been painted in Frederic P. Vinton's studio; "El Jaleo" (bought by T. Jefferson Coolidge); the large square picture of the Boit children; and a few small figure pieces. The picture of the Boit children, dating from 1882, had been seen in the Salon of 1883 under the title of "Portraits d'Enfants, " and it was later shown in the Paris Exposition of 1900. In 1919 it was given to the Boston Art Museum by the daughters of Edward D. Boit in memory of their father, an artist-friend of Sargent's. It is one of the important works of his early period, and one of his best.
In the spring of 1889 his father died. In the summer the artist took, with his mother and sisters, Fladbury Rectory, near Pershore, Worcestershire, for three months, and there they entertained a number of guests - Edwin A. Abbey, Alfred Parsons, Alden Weir, M. and Mme. Paul Helleu, Flora Priestley, and Violet Paget (Vernon Lee). Sargent painted a portrait of Miss Priestley which was exhibited at the New English Art Club in 1896 and drew an elaborate and fervent critique from the fastidious George Moore (Downes, post, pp. 176-77). He also painted a picture of Helleu sketching on the banks of the Avon while his wife reclined on the ground and leaned against his shoulder (Brooklyn Museum). The portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (now in the Tate Gallery), which was exhibited that year, was pronounced "the picture of the year"; it was also called the "best-hated picture of the year. "
The next trip to America occurred in 1890. New York, Philadelphia, and Boston were visited in turn. Sargent painted his celebrated picture of Carmencita, the Spanish dancer, now in the Luxembourg. By many judges it is considered his masterpiece. He made the likenesses of three famous American actors, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Lawrence Barrett.
In Boston he painted a dozen portraits, the most important being the fine full-length group, "Mother and Child" (Mrs. Edward L. Davis and her small son), exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1890 and afterwards in many other places. The trustees of the Boston Public Library commissioned Sargent and his friend Abbey to paint the mural decorations for two of the rooms of the library just then completed. From this time forth a large part of Sargent's time and energy was given to this mural work. He was already tired of so much portrait painting and welcomed the change. He decided to adopt as the subject of his decoration the development of religious thought from paganism through Judaism to Christianity.
In 1891 preliminary work was begun in a huge studio built by Abbey for this purpose in Fairford, Gloucestershire. Sargent had been in Egypt and Greece, getting first-hand data about the pagan deities. The first part of his work (a lunette, frieze, and a section of the ceiling) was completed in 1894 and installed in 1895; and he went to Boston to see to the emplacement. While there, as usual, he painted several portraits. His full-length picture of Ada Rehan was first seen in 1895; to the same year belong his "Coventry Patmore" (National Portrait Gallery, London) and his stylistic "W. Graham Robertson. " The outstanding work of 1897 was the portrait group of Mrs. Carl Meyer and her children; but the culminating event was the appearance in 1898, 1901, and 1902 of the Wertheimer family portraits (Tate Gallery, London). It would be difficult to exaggerate the sensation caused by this prodigious series of works. In them he reached the climax of his life as a portraitist.
The record of his achievements would not be complete without at least a mention of his large portrait groups of "Lady Elcho, Mrs. Tennant and Mrs. Adeane" (1900), "The Misses Hunter" (1902), "The Ladies Alexandra, Mary and Theo Acheson" (1902), and the "Four Doctors" (1906) belonging to the Johns Hopkins University.
His diploma picture, "A Venetian Interior" (1900), is characterized by all of the finest qualities of his art. The room depicted is the grand sala of the Palazzo Barbaro, and the four figures in it are those of the Curtis family of Boston. In 1899 the Copley Hall Sargent loan exhibition in Boston was opened - the most comprehensive showing of his work held during his lifetime. It contained 110 of his pictures. In 1903 the Boston Art Museum sponsored another loan exhibition of twenty portraits, for the most part of Boston and Philadelphia people.
His visits to Boston now increasing in frequency and duration, he established a studio in the Pope Building, Columbus Avenue, which he occupied at intervals during the ensuing twenty years. In this time he crossed and recrossed the Atlantic almost every year; these voyages gave him the only real rest periods he allowed himself to take. He found time to make many summer and autumn trips to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Majorca, Corfu, and other places, but he was always sketching busily. The fateful summer of 1914 found him in the Dolomites, where he continued to paint serenely for a long time after the war had begun.
Early in 1916 he came again to America for the purpose of installing the last of the Boston Public Library decorations. That summer he went off on a sketching expedition to the Canadian Rockies and the Glacier National Park. The beautiful landscape, "Lake O'Hara" (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University), and a group of watercolors were the principal fruits of this tour. Returning to Boston, he worked hard on the scaffoldings in the library until the Christmas holidays, when the completed decorations were at last unveiled to the public gaze.
Having completed the library decorations, the artist now undertook to decorate the rotunda of the Art Museum. In the midst of the preparatory studies for this commission, the British Government invited him to go to the front in northern France and to record his impressions of the war for the Imperial War Museum in London. He proceeded at once to the British General Headquarters in June 1918. Thence he went to Bavincourt, to Arras, and to various places in the war zone. He saw very little that was paintable; was taken with influenza and spent a wretched week in a casualty clearing station, under canvas, surrounded by wounded soldiers; and went back to England in October. His picture "Gassed" was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1919.
Soon after the close of the war he was commissioned to paint for the National Portrait Gallery, London, a large portrait group of twenty-two members of the British General Staff. The Sargent exhibition of 1924 in New York, assembled by himself, contained seventy-two works. The press reviews served to prove that a hostile bloc was forming, recruited mostly from the ranks of the modernists. Public opinion was sharply divided, but the opposition was aggressive.
In July Sargent left for London to carry to completion the mural paintings for the Boston Art Museum and to execute two or three portrait commissions. His death, which occurred in London in April, was due to heart failure.
Achievements
As a portrait painter Sargent may be ranked beneath such masters as Titian, Holbein, Velasquez, Rembrandt, and Hals, but he will be rated as the equal of the best British eighteenth-century painters, Reynolds and Gainsborough. The vitality of his personages ensures the future fame of the artist.
As a painter of genre he is original, piquant, objective, and often has great charm of style. His interiors in Italy and Spain - the "Venetian Interior, " the "Spanish Courtyard, " the "Hospital at Granada, " the "Breakfast in the Loggia" (Freer Gallery) - are delightful, personal, and full of flavor. In landscape he was not so preeminent, though the "Lake O'Hara" is a handsome canvas, and some of his Alpine subjects have excellent points.
His water colors, of which there are large groups in the museums of Brooklyn, Boston, New York, and Worcester, are truly superb for their spontaneity, freedom, luminosity, and limpid style. He was doubtless the most masterful water colorist of his time, with the single exception of Winslow Homer.
The list of his medals, prizes, and orders would fill a whole page. Sargent was made a Royal Academician in 1897. He declined a knighthood offered by the premier in 1907, saying that he was an American citizen.
(WINNER of the W. E. Fischelis Award from the Victorian So...)
Views
Quotations:
"I have learned to admire Tintoretto immensely and to consider him perhaps second only to Michelangelo and Titian. "
Personality
Sargent seldom rested; his so-called vacations became sketching-tours. He was blessed with a fine physique, and felt little need of husbanding his strength.
Sargent was modest, generous, and absolutely sincere. Adulation and flattery were distasteful to him. He underrated his own ability and at times made fun of his own paintings. He was not avaricious, and cared little for luxuries. He was an accomplished linguist and a musician of talent, but found his chief pleasure in his work.
Quotes from others about the person
Julian Alden Weir noted that Sargent was "one of the most talented fellows I have ever come across; his drawings are like the old masters, and his color is equally fine. "
In a TIME magazine article from the 1980s, critic Robert Hughes praised Sargent as "the unrivaled recorder of male power and female beauty in a day that, like ours, paid excessive court to both. "
Connections
Sargent was a lifelong bachelor with a wide circle of friends. He was never married.
