John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent ( born January 12, 1856 in Florence, † April 15, 1925 in London) was considered the most important American portrait painter of his time.

Life

Sargent, a distant cousin of the botanist Charles Sprague Sargent was born as the son of American parents and spent most of his childhood traveling. The training of the young John consisted mainly of museum visits, as any form of schooling failed due to the nomadic lifestyle of the parents. When he was 13 years old, he became a pupil of the German American painter Carl Welsch in Rome. In 1871 he moved to Dresden and from there he traveled to Venice. In 1874 he began an apprenticeship in Paris at the French portraitist Carolus- Durant. His early portraits exhibit exceptionally safe brushwork.

His life was marked by extensive travels, 1874-1880 toured the then based in Paris, Sargent Europe and indulged his passion for the sea. In his landscapes are found among other scenes from Tyrol, Italy, Tangier, Algiers, Palestine, Egypt, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Scotland and Norway. He added in his landscapes a nahsichtige figure studies, particularly what they characterized.

In Paris he took in 1884 at the Salon de Paris in part, where his paintings Madame X and The Boit daughters emerged ( with a Technique clearly under the influence of Velázquez ), which then triggered scandals. In the painting Madame X, he had shown more bare shoulder, as it considered the Parisian salons of the Belle Epoque for beneficial. Sargent also took part in the resistance against the conservative understanding of art at the Royal Academy of Arts, and founded in 1885 together with Thomas Cooper Gotch, Stanhope Forbes, Frank Bramley and other artists of the New English Art Club. In 1886 he moved to London and took over the studio of James McNeill Whistler, where he painted La Carmencita 1890 and 1897 Henry Marquand.

Around the turn of the century, he participated in the early exhibitions of the Pastel Society. His technical brilliance made ​​him the most sought-after portraitist Society - Europe. The London art dealer Asher Wertheimer ordered a total of twelve portraits of his family at Sargent. He created life-size portraits of American and English aristocracy in a influenced by Whistler and the Spanish tone painting impressionist style.

Gallery

A Street in Venice, 1882

Madame X, 1884

Lady Pauline Waldorf Astor to 1898-99

Mrs. Fiske Warren ( Gretchen Osgood ) and Her Daughter Rachel, 1903 ( Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Henry James, 1913

John D. Rockefeller, 1917