Portal:John Singer Sargent
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Introduction
John Singer Sargent (/ˈsɑːrdʒənt/; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.
He was born in Florence of American parents, and trained in Paris prior to moving to London. Sargent enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter, although not without controversy and some critical reservation; an early submission to the Paris Salon, his Portrait of Madame X, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter, but it resulted in scandal instead. From the beginning his work was characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. He lived most of his life in Europe. Art historians generally ignored "society" artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.
Selected general articles
Madame X or Portrait of Madame X is the title of a portrait painting by John Singer Sargent of a young socialite named Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, wife of the French banker Pierre Gautreau. Madame X was painted not as a commission, but at the request of Sargent. It is a study in opposition. Sargent shows a woman posing in a black satin dress with jeweled straps, a dress that reveals and hides at the same time. The portrait is characterized by the pale flesh tone of the subject contrasted against a dark colored dress and background.
The scandal resulting from the painting's controversial reception at the Paris Salon of 1884 amounted to a temporary set-back to Sargent while in France, though it may have helped him later establish a successful career in Britain and America. Read more...
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose is an oil-on-canvas painting made by the Anglo-American painter John Singer Sargent in 1885–6.
The painting depicts two small children dressed in white who are lighting paper lanterns as day turns to evening; they are in a garden strewn with pink roses, accents of yellow carnations and tall white lilies (possibly the Japanese mountain lily, Lilium auratum) behind them.
The painting is dominated by green foliage, with no horizon or other horizontal line to give a sense of depth. The viewer seems to be on a level with the children but also looking down on them.
The two subjects of the painting are the daughters of the illustrator Frederick Barnard – a friend of Sargent's. Dolly, left, was 11 years old and Polly, right, seven years old; they were chosen for their blonde hair, replacing Sargent's original model, Francis Davis Millet's five-year-old daughter, dark-haired Katherine.
The title comes from the refrain of a popular song "Ye Shepherds Tell Me" by Joseph Mazzinghi, a pastoral glee for a trio of male voices, which mentions Flora wearing "A wreath around her head, around her head she wore, Carnation, lily, lily, rose". Read more...
John Singer Sargent, General Officers of World War I, 1920-22.
General Officers of World War I (originally entitled Some General Officers of the Great War) is an oil painting by John Singer Sargent, completed in 1922. It was commissioned by South African financier Sir Abraham Bailey, 1st Baronet to commemorate the generals who commanded British and British Empire armies in the First World War. Read more...
El Jaleo is a large painting by John Singer Sargent, depicting a Spanish Gypsy dancer performing to the accompaniment of musicians. Painted in 1882, it currently hangs in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Read more...
Mrs. Hugh Hammersley is an 1892 painting by John Singer Sargent. It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Read more...
Gassed is a very large oil painting completed in March 1919 by John Singer Sargent. It depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack during the First World War, with a line of wounded soldiers walking towards a dressing station. Sargent was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to document the war and visited the Western Front in July 1918 spending time with the Guards Division near Arras, and then with the American Expeditionary Forces near Ypres. The painting was finished in March 1919 and voted picture of the year by the Royal Academy of Arts in 1919. It is now held by the Imperial War Museum. It visited the US in 1999 for a series of retrospective exhibitions, and then from 2016 to 2018 for exhibitions commemorating the centenary of the First World War. Read more...- The Grand Central School of Art was an American art school in New York City, founded in 1923 by the painters Edmund Greacen, Walter Leighton Clark and John Singer Sargent. The school was established and run by the Grand Central Art Galleries, an artists' cooperative founded by Sargent, Greacen, Clark, and others in 1922. The school was directed by Greacen, Sargent and Daniel Chester French and occupied 7,000 square feet (650 m2) on the seventh floor of the east wing of the Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Press accounts of the school's opening reception mentioned the following instructors: Greacen, George Pearse Ennis, sculptor Chester Beach, muralists Ezra Winter and Dean Cornwell, the illustrator and costume designer Helen Dryden, Nicolai Fechin, Julian Bowes and George Elmer Browne.
The school had more than 400 students its first year and soon grew to 900, making it one of the largest art schools in the city. Greacen engaged Arshile Gorky as an instructor, probably the school's most prominent teacher. Another instructor was Harvey Dunn, whose comments were captured by a student during one five-hour class session and were published in 1934 in a slim volume titled An Evening in the Classroom. For some years the school held a summer session in Eastport, Maine. After nearly 20 years of operation, the school closed in 1944. Read more...
Mrs. Fiske Warren (Gretchen Osgood) and Her Daughter Rachel is a 1903 oil on canvas portrait painting by American portrait painter John Singer Sargent of Gretchen Osgood Warren, an American actress, singer, and poet, and her daughter Rachel Warren. The painting measures at 152.4 × 102.55 cm (60.0 × 40.4 in) and is exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. The museum acquired it on 13 May 1964. Read more...
Street in Venice, c. 1882. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. 45.1 cm × 53.9 cm
Street in Venice (or A Street Scene in Venice) is a c. 1882 oil on wood painting by the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925). Painted in a post-impressionist manner, it is set in a quiet backstreet off the Calle Larga dei Proverbi, near the Grand Canal in Venice. The painting shows a young woman walking along the flagstones, kicking her skirt with her right foot, and observed by two men in the shadows to her right. From the manner in which Sargent depicts her down-turned eyes and seemingly fast pace with which she passes the two men, he is concerned largely with the invasive male glare and its effect on the passing woman.
The painting is one of a number of Venetian scenes painted or drawn by Sargent, who spent most of his life in Europe, during his time in the city. As in his other works, it largely ignores the architectural aspects the city is best known for and focuses instead on edgy back-street imagery. The influence of Impressionism is evident in a number of this work's features, especially in the broad brush strokes of her dress and the unusual cropping of the composition. Read more...
Cashmere (French: cachemire) is an oil painting by the American artist John Singer Sargent, currently in a private collection. It was completed in c.1908. The dimensions of the painting are 71.1 by 109.2 centimeters. Read more...
The Grand Central Art Galleries were the exhibition and administrative space of the nonprofit Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, and others. Artists closely associated with the Grand Central Art Galleries included Hovsep Pushman, George de Forest Brush, and especially Sargent, whose posthumous show took place there in 1928.
The Galleries were active from 1923 until 1994. For 29 years they were located on the sixth floor of Grand Central Terminal. At their 1923 opening, the Galleries covered 14,000 square feet (1,300 m2) and offered nine exhibition areas and a reception room, described as "the largest sales gallery of art in the world." In 1958 the Galleries moved to the second floor of the Biltmore Hotel, where they had six exhibition rooms and an office. They remained at the Biltmore for 23 years, until it was converted into an office building. The Galleries then moved to 24 West 57th Street, where they remained until they ceased activity. Read more...
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (originally titled Portraits d'enfants) is a painting by John Singer Sargent. The painting depicts four young girls, the daughters of Edward Darley Boit, in their family's Paris apartment. It was painted in 1882 and is now exhibited in the new Art of the Americas Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting hangs between the two tall blue-and-white Japanese vases depicted in the work; they were donated by the heirs of the Boit family.
It has been described as "Arguably the most psychologically compelling painting of Sargent's career". Though the painting's unusual composition was noted from its earliest viewings, initially its subject was interpreted simply as that of girls at play, but it has subsequently been viewed in more abstract terms, reflecting Freudian analysis and a greater interest in the ambiguities of adolescence. Read more...- Egyptians Raising Water from the Nile is an 1890–1891 painting by John Singer Sargent. It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Sargent made several trips to Egypt, Greece and Turkey as part of a project commissioned by the Boston Public Library to explore the origin of Western religion through art. Whilst in Egypt he created this canvas in 1890–91, depicting a group of locals drinking or collecting water from the Nile which had been raised to the bank by a shaduf. Read more...
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.
From the beginning his work was characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. Read more...
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth is an oil painting by John Singer Sargent. Painted in 1889, it depicts actress Ellen Terry in a famous performance of William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, wearing a green dress decorated with iridescent beetle wings. The play was produced by Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre, London, with Irving also playing Macbeth opposite Terry. Sargent attended the opening night on 29 December 1888 and was inspired to paint Terry's portrait almost immediately. Read more...
The Wyndham Sisters: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane, and Mrs. Tennant is an 1899 painting by John Singer Sargent. It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Wyndham Sisters was hailed by the critics and dubbed “The Three Graces” by the Prince of Wales. Read more...
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw is an oil on canvas portrait painting of Gertrude Agnew, the wife of Sir Andrew Agnew, 9th Baronet. The painting was commissioned in 1892 and completed the same year by the American portrait artist John Singer Sargent. It measures 127 × 101 cm (50.0 × 39.8 in) and is owned by the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland. The museum acquired it through the Cowan Smith Bequest Fund in 1925. Read more...- William M. Chase, N. A. is a 1902 painting by John Singer Sargent. It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The subject of the portrait, William Merritt Chase, was an American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a leading New York art teacher. The postnomial N. A. indicates his election to New York’s National Academy of Design. The painting was commissioned by a group of his pupils, who subsequently raised the money to pay Sargent by exhibiting the work. Read more...
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Selected images
Fanny Watts, Sargent's childhood friend. The first painting at Paris Salon, 1877, Philadelphia Museum of Art
John Singer Sargent in his studio with Portrait of Madame X, c. 1885
El Jaleo (Spanish Dancer), c. 1879–82, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Rosina, 1878, depicting Rosina Ferrara
Sargent photographed by James E. Purdy in 1903
Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood, 1885, the Tate, London
Theodore Roosevelt, 1903. Sargent had Roosevelt hold his pose when he turned around with impatience to address the artist while they were walking around the White House surveying possible locations for the portrait.
Sargent's grave in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey
Man Standing, Hands on Head in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ca. 1890–1910
An Out-of-Doors Study, 1889, depicting Paul César Helleu sketching with his wife Alice Guérin. The Brooklyn Museum, New York
Sargent emphasized Almina Wertheimer's exotic beauty in 1908 by dressing her en turquerie.
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