| John Singer Sargent |
Article Index for John |
Website Links For John Singer |
Information AboutJohn Singer Sargent |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT JOHN SINGER SARGENT | |
| 1856 births | |
| 1925 deaths | |
| john singer sargent | |
| american painters1856 births | |
| 1925 deaths | |
| john singer sargent | |
| american painters | |
| american painters | |
| sargent, john singer | |
| portrait artists | |
| realist painters | |
| capri | |
|
John Singer Sargent ( January 12 , 1856 – April 14 , 1925 ) was the most successful portrait painter of his era, as well as a gifted landscape painter and watercolorist. Sargent was born in Florence , Italy to American parents. He studied in Italy and Germany , and then in Paris under Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran . BIOGRAPHY '', 1884, oil on canvas, 234.95 x 109.86 cm, Metropolitan Museum Of Art , Manhattan.]] Training Sargent studied with Carolus-Duran, whose influence would be pivotal, from 1874-1878. Carolus-Duran's atelier was progressive, dispensing with the traditional academic approach which required careful drawing and underpainting, in favor of the alla prima method of working directly on the canvas with a loaded brush, derived from Diego Velázquez . It was an approach which relied on the proper placement of tones of paint.Elizabeth Prettejohn: ''Interpreting Sargent'', page 9. Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1998. In 1879 Sargent painted a portrait of Carolus-Duran; the virtuoso effort met with public approval, and announced the direction his mature work would take. Its showing at the Paris Salon was both a tribute to his teacher and an advertisement for portrait commissions.Prettejohn, page 14, 1998. Of Sargent's early work, Henry James wrote that the artist offered 'the slightly "uncanny" spectacle of a talent which on the very threshold of its career has nothing more to learn'.Prettejohn, page 13, 1998. Portraits In the early 1880s Sargent regularly exhibited portraits at the Salon, and these were mostly full-length portrayals of women: ''Madame Edouard Pailleron'' in 1880, ''Madame Ramón Subercaseaux'' in 1881, and ''Lady with the Rose'', 1882. He continued to receive positive critical notice.Ormond, Richard: "Sargent's Art", ''John Singer Sargent'', page 25-7. Tate Gallery, 1998. '', 1895, oil on canvas, 91 x 61 1/4 in.]] Sargent's best portraits reveal the individuality and personality of the sitters; his most ardent admirers think he is matched in this only by Velázquez, who was one of Sargent's great influences. The Spanish master's spell is apparent in Sargent's '' of Capri , and the Spanish expatriate model, Carmela Bertagna , but the earlier pictures had not been intended for broad public reception. Before his arrival in England Sargent began sending paintings for exhibition at the '', a large piece, painted on site, of two young girls lighting lanterns in an English garden. The painting was immediately purchased by the Tate Gallery . In 1894 Sargent was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and was made a full member three years later. In the 1890s he averaged fourteen portrait commissions per year, none more beautiful than the genteel ''Lady Agnew of Lochnaw'' , 1892. As a portrait painter in the grand manner, Sargent's success was unmatched; his subjects were at once ennobled and often possessed of nervous energy (''Mrs. Hugh Hammersley'', 1892). With little fear of contradiction, Sargent was referred to as 'the Van Dyck of our times'.Ormond, page 28-35, 1998. Sargent painted a series of three portraits of and Woodrow Wilson . Other work , oil on canvas, 240 x 348 cm, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum , Boston.]] During the greater part of Sargent's career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolours, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. From 1907"In the history of portraiture there is no other instance of a major figure abandoning his profession and shutting up shop in such a peremptory way." Ormond, Page 38, 1998. on Sargent forsook portrait painting and focused on landscapes in his later years; In 1925, soon before he died, Sargent painted his last oil portrait, a canvas of in 1916. John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery, "Royal Society of Portrait Painters" Sargent is usually not thought of as an '' is rendered in his own version of the impressionist style. , Manhattan.]] Although Sargent was an American expatriate, he returned to the United States many times, often to answer the demand for commissioned portraits. Many of his most important works are in museums in the U.S.; in 1909 he exhibited eighty-six watercolours in , Sargent made numerous visits to the United States in the last decade of his life, including a stay of two full years from 1915-1917. Kilmurray, Elaine: "Chronology of Travels", ''Sargent Abroad'', page 242. Abbeville Press, 1997. It is in some of his late works where one senses Sargent painting most purely for himself. His watercolors, often of landscapes documenting his travels (''Santa Maria della Salute'', 1904 , Brooklyn Museum Of Art ), were executed with a joyful fluidness. In watercolours and oils he portrayed his friends and family dressed in Orientalist costume, relaxing in brightly lit landscapes that allowed for a more vivid palette and experimental handling than did his commissions (''The Chess Game'', 1906 ).Prettejohn, page 66-69, 1998. Relationships Among the artists with whom Sargent associated were , whose recommendation for knighthood the artist declined.Kilmurray: "Chronology of Travels", page 240, 1997. '', 1903 ; click on photo for background story.]] Sargent was extremely private regarding his personal life, although the painter Jacques-Émile Blanche, who was one of his early sitters, said after his death that Sargent's sex life "was notorious in Paris, and in Venice, positively scandalous. He was a frenzied bugger."Fairbrother, Trevor ''John Singer Sargent: The Sensualist'' (2001)ISBN 0-300-08744-6, Page 139, Note 4 The truth of this may never be established. Some scholars have suggested that Sargent was homosexual. He had personal associations with Prince Edmond de Polignac and Count Robert de Montesquiou. His male nudes reveal complex and well-considered artistic sensibilities about the male physique and male sensuality; this can be particularly observed in his portrait of ''Thomas E. McKeller'', but also in ''Tommies Bathing'', nude sketches for ''Hell'' and ''Judgement'', and his portraits of young men, like ''Bartholomy Maganosco'' and ''Head of Olimpio Fusco''. However, there were many friendships with women, as well, and a similar sensualism informs his female portrait and figure studies (notably ''Egyptian Girl'', 1891). The likelihood of an affair with Louise Burkhardt, the model for ''Lady with the Rose'', is accepted by Sargent scholars.Ormond, page 14, 1998. ASSESSMENT In a time when the art world focused, in turn, on published a satirical turn under the heading "Sargentolatry".Ormond, page 276, 1998. By the time of his death he was dismissed as an anachronism,Prettejohn, page 73, 1998. Prettejohn suggests that the decline of Sargent's reputation was due partly to the rise of anti-Semitism, and the resultant intolerance of 'celebrations of Jewish prosperity'. a relic of the Gilded Age and out of step with the artistic sentiments of post- World War I Europe. Foremost of Sargent's detractors was the influential English art critic Roger Fry , of the Bloomsbury Group , who at the 1926 Sargent retrospective in London dismissed Sargent's work as lacking aesthetic quality.'Wonderful indeed, but most wonderful that this wonderful performance should ever have been confused with that of an artist.' Prettejohn, page 73, 1998. Despite a long period of critical disfavor, Sargent's popularity has increased steadily since the 1960s, and Sargent has been the subject of recent large-scale exhibitions in major museums, including a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum Of American Art in 1986, and a 1999 "blockbuster" travelling show that exhibited at the Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston , the National Gallery Of Art Washington , and the National Gallery, London . It has been suggested that the exotic qualitiesSargent's friend Vernon Lee referred to the artist's "outspoken love of the exotic...the unavowed love of rare kinds of beauty, for incredible types of elegance." Charteris, Evan: ''John Sargent'', page 252. London and New York, 1927. inherent in his work appealed to the sympathies of the Jewish clients whom he painted from the 1890s on. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his portrait ''Almina, Daughter of Asher Wertheimer'' (1908), in which the subject is seen wearing a Persia n costume, a pearl encrusted turban, and strumming an India n Sarod , accoutrements all meant to convey sensuality and mystery. If Sargent used this portrait to explore issues of sexuality and identity, it seems to have met with the satisfaction of the subject's father, Asher Wertheimer, a wealthy Jewish art dealer living in London, who commissioned from Sargent a series of a dozen portraits of his family, the artist's largest commission from a single patron.Ormond, page 169-171, 1998. The paintings reveal a pleasant familiarity between the artist and his subjects. Wertheimer bequeathed most of the paintings to the National Gallery .Ormond, page 148, 1998. John Singer Sargent is interred in Brookwood Cemetery near Woking, Surrey .1 POSTHUMOUS SALES '''' sold in 2004 for $ 8.8 million to Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn to be installed at his newest casino, Wynn Las Vegas . In December 2004, ''Group with Parasols (A Siesta)'' (1905) sold for 23.5 million, nearly double the Sotheby's estimate of $12 million. The previous highest price for a Sargent painting was 11 million.'' The Age '', 3 December , 2004 SELECTED WORKS
NOTES REFERENCES
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|