ART FOR ART'S SAKE

Leaving it all behind for . . .

My hotel in Costa, Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece.

Blog postings will recommence on September 17.

This is a very relaxed scene, painted by John Singer Sargent.

I like the little touch of the discarded shoes in the foreground.

Corfu: A Rainy Day
John Singer Sargent 1909
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Watercolor over graphite on thick, rough, cream wove paper.

Sargent first met Monet in 1876, but the two artists were closest ten years later. It was probably in 1885 that they painted together at Giverny.

Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood, ca. 1885.
Oil on canvas
John Singer Sargent

Here is another Venice painting by Sargent.

Palazzo Labia and San Geremia, Venice
John Singer Sargent 1913

Oil on canvas

I have found another "siesta" painting by John Sargent - a watercolour of gondoliers in Venice.

'Gondoliers' Siesta' 1905
John Singer Sargent

"John Singer Sargent painted watercolors most of his life, but until about 1900 he did so only fitfully and, as he said, to "make the best of an emergency."

By about 1900 Sargent had tired of formal portraiture. "No more paughtraits," he wrote his friend Ralph Curtis. "I abhor and abjure them and hope never to do another especially of the Upper Classes."

In depicting figures, 'Gondoliers' Siesta' is something of a rarity among Sargent's later Venetian watercolors.

And instead of the clear blue skies and vibrantly coruscating light of most of Sargent's Venetian watercolors, 'Gondoliers' Siesta' is, with its overcast sky, more subdued, more languid, shadowy, and even mysterious.'

( From: http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/horo_041.shtm )

Here is the sister painting to yesterday's "Group with Parasols"

Another lazy day! The young lady looks rather indecorous.

Siesta 1907
John Singer Sargent

(Watercolour on paper 16 x 21 inches)

John Sargent produced at least two paintings on the subject of a siesta.

Here is the first and I shall post the second tomorrow.

Group with Parasols (Or A Siesta)
John Singer Sargent - c. 1905

The two men in the painting are Peter Harrison and his brother Leonard Frederic "Ginx'' Harrison.

They were Sargent's close friends and travelling companions and accompanied him on his travels to Switzerland and Italy, where he featured them in a series of watercolour studies.

However, this particular painting is oil on canvas.

Sargent painted many portraits of children, usually on commission from proud, doting parents.

However, this painting is inscribed to the young sitter's mother and it is presumed that it was not a commissioned work, but a token of gratitude for the Goodrich's hospitality during the artist's stay with them in Newport, when he visited the United States.

At the time when the painting was made, the boy would have been aged six, but he looks older. His father was an Admiral in the US Navy.

Portrait of Caspar Goodrich
John Singer Sargent - 1887
Oil on canvas

In this painting Sargent successfully combines both portraiture and landscape.

Frederick Law Olmsted
John Singer Sargent 1895

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is widely recognized as the founder of American landscape architecture and the nation's foremost parkmaker. His first, his most loved, and in many ways he's best known work was his design of Central Park in New York city (1858-1876) with his partner Calvert Vaux (1824-1895). But he would go on to have a significant influence in the way cities and communities are built with the idea of nature and parks around us. He is one of the first to put forth the principles of the City Beautiful Movement in America. He was also one of the first to introduce the idea of suburban development to the American landscape.

"I have all my life been considering distant effects and sacrificing immediate success and applause to that of the future."

"Like many of his contemporaries, Sargent was captivated by Venice and visited the city frequently between 1898 and 1913.

He positioned himself close to the water, as if in a gondola, to present a view looking down the Rio de San Barnaba toward the Grand Canal".

Venetian Canal, 1913
John Singer Sargent

In 1882 Sargent, aged 26, was in Venice where he painted this captivating scene.

The Sulphur Match 1882
John Singer Sargent

"A tipsy Venetian leans her chair precariously against a wall, having let a goblet crash at her feet, while Sargent lights her dark partner's cigar (or pipe?) with a single flash of blazing white. The girl is unimpressed by this; Sargent is an intruder, hopelessly alien in this world he can only make visible. It is difficult to imagine a more vivid example of artistic - or sexual - alienation."

(Artchive)

I don't know much about this portrait, but the title suggests that it is of an artist, looking for a suitable spot to set up his easel.

Do you think it may be a self-portrait?

"Reconnoitering" - John Singer Sargent (circa 1911)

Pitti Palace Museum (Italy)

Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife
John Singer Sargent 1889
(The Brooklyn Museum, NY)

Paul Helleu (1859 - 1927) was one of Sargent's closest friends. They had met in Paris in 1878 when Paul was 18 years old and Sargent 22.

Helleu met Alice Louise Guérin in Paris in 1884 and they married two years later. Alice became Paul's favorite model. Over the years he painted her in oils, pastels, and lithographs. When they visited Sargent she was nineteen years old and he thirty.

In late 1892 Sargent began work on the portrait of Lady Agnew, commissioned by Andrew Noel Agnew, a barrister who had inherited the baronetcy and estates of Lochnaw in Galloway.

The sitter was to be of his young wife, Gertrude Vernon (1865-1932).

Lady Agnew - John Singer Sargent

The critics loved it when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1898 and subsequent exhibitions:

A masterpiece... not only a triumph of technique but the finest example of portraiture in the literal sense of the word, that has been seen here in a long while. (The Times, 1893)

A Bedouin Arab- John Singer Sargent

The Breakfast Table - John Singer Sargent

The figure is Sargent's younger sister, Violet (later Mrs. Francis Ormond). The picture was almost certainly painted at the home of his parents in Nice.

I mentioned the other day that Sargent had painted a picture of an untidy hotel room.

Here it is:

A Hotel Room 1906-1907

Ellen Terry (27 February 1847 – 21 July 1928) was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain.

In this painting Sargent portrays her as Lady Macbeth.

I wonder how long she had to pose holding that crown over her head?

Following Sargent's painting of a naked Egyptian girl, shown here yesterday, I am moving on to his most famous male nude, which he considered one of his best works.

It was first seen by the public when a photograph of it was published in a biography of the artist in 1955.

(Click on image to enlarge)

I am returning to Sargent's nude figures with this of a young Egyptian girl.

It is believed to be the only female nude that he painted in oil.

It was well received at the New English Art Club exhibition of 1891 and at the World Columbian Exposition, Chicago of 1893.

You will need to click on the image to enlarge and view it properly.

Egyptian Girl
1891

John Singer Sargent
Private collection on loan to
the Art Institute of Chicago
Oil on canvas
185.4 x 58.4 cm (73 x 23 in.)

I find this painting by John Singer Sargent a little "twee" - I don't know about you.

Perhaps OK for a child's bedroom?

"Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose"

Tate Gallery, London

68.50 inch wide x 60.50 inch high

Following "Girl Fishing" yesterday, here is a fisherman.

Is that the fisher-girl, lying beside him?

Val d'Aosta: Man Fishing

John Singer Sargent

Addison Gallery Of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts

This painting by John Singer Sargent is in an unspecified private collection.

I particularly like the blueness of the sea - or is it a river?

Girl Fishing
John Singer Sargent

An Artist in His Studio
1904
Oil on canvas
56.2 x 72.07 cm (22 1/8 x 28 3/8 in.)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

On a summer vacation in the Italian Alps, Sargent depicted his friend, the artist Ambrogio Raffele, painting a bucolic landscape. The setting is a cramped hotel bedroom. Surrounded by sketches presumably made outdoors, Raffele holds a palette that bears actual blobs of thick, bright paint. Half the composition is given over to rumpled sheets and a discarded smock--an extraordinary display of brilliant brushwork that gave Sargent the opportunity (which he loved) of painting white on white.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Miss Eliza Wedgwood and Miss Sargent Sketching - 1908

A Parisian Beggar Girl
John Singer Sargent

She is only a child. Who could resist her appeal?

Sargent visited Venice on several occasions and painted mostly architectural studies and landscapes.

However, I much prefer his figure work and here are two people chatting in a Venetian alleyway.

A Street In Venice - John Singer Sargent

This painting by JSS is an interesting composition - two figures separated by a dominating doorway, with a view to the garden wall of the title.

Does it work? I think it does because, after stepping outside, I return to the two ladies and try to guess what their relationship is - and why they are sitting apart.

The Garden Wall 1910
John Singer Sargent

Yesterday I went to London and paid a brief visit to the National Gallery's current exhibition "Corot to Monet - A fresh look at Landscape from the Collection".

Whilst I appreciated the work of the French pre-Impressionists, I was pleased to see that a few paintings by John Constable were also included.

I am returning to John Singer Sargent with this painting from 1910, when he was 54.

It was painted at the Villa Torre Galli at Scandicci on the outskirts of Florence, where Sargent stayed with a party of friends during the autumn of 1910.

The women are Lady Richmond (wife of Sir William Blake Richmond, best known for his mosaics in the chancel of St Paul's cathedral London) and Jane de Glehn, who also appeared in 'The Garden Wall', which I will post here tomorrow.

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