1856-1925 John Singer Sargent Locations John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 ?C April 14, 1925) was the most successful portrait painter of his era. 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. Before Sargent??s birth, his father FitzWilliam was an eye surgeon at the Wills Hospital in Philadelphia. After his older sister died at the age of two, his mother Mary (n??e Singer) suffered a mental collapse and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic ex-patriates for the rest of their lives. Though based in Paris, Sargent??s parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. While she was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Italy because of a cholera epidemic, and there Sargent was born in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born. After her birth FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wife??s entreaties to remain abroad. They lived modestly on a small inheritance and savings, living an isolated life with their children and generally avoiding society and other Americans except for friends in the art world. Four more children were born abroad of whom two lived past childhood. Though his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, more interested in outdoor activities than his studies. As his father wrote home, ??He is quite a close observer of animated nature.?? Contrary to his father, his mother was quite convinced that traveling around Europe, visiting museums and churches, would give young Sargent a satisfactory education. Several attempts to give him formal schooling failed, owning mostly to their itinerant life. She was a fine amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions. Young Sargent worked with care on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from the Illustrated London News of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his son??s interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career. At thirteen, his mother reported that John ??sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist.?? At age thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Though his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a highly literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music, and literature. He was fluent in French, Italian, and German. At seventeen, Sargent was described as ??willful, curious, determined and strong?? (after his mother) yet shy, generous, and modest (after his father). He was well-acquainted with many of the great masters from first hand observation, as he wrote in 1874, ??I have learned in Venice to admire Tintoretto immensely and to consider him perhaps second only to Michael Angelo and Titian.??  Related Paintings of John Singer Sargent :. | Sargent Familie Sitwell | Black Brook | Study for the Boston Public Library Murals | Robert de Cevrieux | Carnation |
Related Artists:
FERRARI, Gaudenzio
Italian High Renaissance Painter, ca.1471-1546
abstrakt akvarell
Akvarell är en målningsteknik där färgen läggs på i transparenta skikt på ett tjockt, lätt sugande papper. Papper av högsta kvalitet är syrafritt och framställt av bomullslump. Det kan variera kraftigt i olika vithetstoner och tjocklek. Ytans ytstruktur kallas gräng och finns av flera slag. Akvarellpapper levereras i block med limmade kanter runt om, så att papperet håller sig slätt, när det blir fuktigt av färgen. Lösa papper kan prepareras genom att fukta igenom det ordentligt med rent vatten och sen klistra/tejpa upp det på en styv skiva. När papperet torkat har inbyggda spänningar utjämnats, och det bubblar sig mindre, när akvarellfärgen läggs på. Akvarell målas ofta med en tjock pensel som kan hålla mycket vätska, samtidigt som den kan formas till en mycket fin spets. Den finaste kvaliteten görs av mårdhår eller sobelhår. Mycket smala linjer kan göras med hjälp av tunna spetsiga penslar eller dragstift, som egentligen är avsedda för för tuschritning. Gamla tiders stålpennor för bläck duger också för detta ändamål.
Clare George
British 1860-1900