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John Singer Sargent
(1856-1925)
John Singer Sargent, son of American expatriate parents, was born in Florence, Italy. He grew up in Europe, and studied painting in the Paris studio of the noted French portraitist Carolus-Duran and at the ¨¦cole des Beaux-Arts. His first visit to the USA took place in 1876. He traveled much throughout Europe to study the art of different countries and times.
Among Sargent's first important clients in Paris were the Paillerons. He painted four portraits for them. Edouard Pailleron, was a noted poet and playwright, and the son-in-law of the editor of a literary journal, Revue des deux mondes. His wife¡¯s family, the Bulozes, collected modern paintings. Sargent painted the portraits of both spouses in 1879.
At the 1884 Paris Salon, Sargent showed his now famous picture Madame X, the portrait of the 23-year-old American Virginie Gautreau. Virginie¡¯s extravagant gown, bare shoulders, and arrogant manner, shocked the public. Critics found the picture eccentric and erotic. After this failure, Sargent dropped his hopes of establishing himself as a portrait painter in Paris. In 1886, he moved to London, where he spent most of his adult life, visiting America only on short trips.
During the next two years Sargent experimented with the Impressionist style. He was a close friend of Claude Monet, whom he painted sketching out of doors (Claude Monet Painting at the Edge of a Wood). Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose was really the first piece of public impressionism to be produced in Britain, and for several years after its exhibition in 1887 it remained the most important example of the new style.
In 1888-1889, Sargent ¡°was busy painting the play of light on sunlit water, catching the exact flicker, the ripple of the reflections and their fleeting effect on objects with range. He made several studies of his sister, Mrs Ormond, under those conditions: A Morning Walk, A Gust of Wind. These pictures show a delicacy of touch and a tenderness of color which give way to other qualities in his later work. The charm we see here is not the charm we are accustomed to look for in the work of subsequent years. It is more intimate and personal, more subtle and pervasive. Broken touches, here and there broken color, lightness of key, harmony of tone, unity of effect, and contrast reduced to its lowest terms.¡± (The Hon Evan Charteris: The Life of John Sargent. William Heinemann. p. 99)
In a few years Sargent became the most admired portrait painter in Britain and the United States. Sir Osbert Sitwell, who sat for Sargent with his family as a boy, summed up his popularity: ¡°¡looking at his (Sargent¡¯s) portraits, they understood at last how rich they really were¡ They had waited, among other things for Sargent to record them, and he snatched many of them from Ti.... |
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