Saturday Salon: A Favorite Painting or Two.....or Three!

Repose

The Spanish Dancer

The Children of Asher Wertheimer

A Dinner Table At Night

The Sitwell Family

Madame X, the scandalous painting that drove Sargent's move to London from Paris. The over-sized portrait hung in Sargent's studio until he sold it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few years before his death.

Sargent in his studio with the infamous portrait.

Lady Agnew of Lohnaw

Mrs. Joshua Montgomery Sears

Portait of famed actress Ellen Terry in her Lady MacBeth costume. In her Jack the Ripper mystery, author Marantz Cohen sets a conversation between James and Sargent in the studio, at the time of Terry's sitting.

Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner, art patron.

Portrait of Louise Pomeroy.

An artist in his studio - might be a self-portrait.

Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Portrait of Coventry Patmore.

Smoke of Ambergris

Two Women Asleep in A Punt Under the Willows

 

 

Paul-Cesar Helleu Sketching With His Wife. That pinky!

American John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925) , "...the greatest society portrait painter of his time." is one of my very favorite artists. His elegant, often larger than life portrait work remains unequaled, far as I'm concerned. One sees majesty in Sargent's paintings and even now, when majesty appears to have gone by the wayside, it is thrilling to find it in Sargent's work.

Sketch of his friend, author Henry James, by Sargent.

We've spoken about Sargent before, but my feeling is that you can never have too much of a good thing. Having recently read the wonderful book, WHAT ALICE KNEW A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper by Paula Marantz Cohen, a mystery in which John Singer Sargent plays a small role, I realized that another, more comprehensive, showing of Sargent's work was overdue.

Self-portrait.

John Singer Sargent was an American born to ex-pat parents in Florence, Italy in 1856. His parents continued to live and travel abroad after Sargent's mother suffered a breakdown upon the death, in America, of  his sister.


Sargent's facility for drawing with a loaded brush - derived from Diego Velazquez - and avoiding the well established rule of sketching and under-painting, made him the object of criticism from some quarters, but on the whole he was a well established and admired painter who glamorized the age he lived in.. Later in life he tired of the portrait business and began concentrating on landscapes and watercolor. Though the high prices he asked for and received for his portrait work had made him a wealthy man.

A life long bachelor, Sargent's sexuality is debated even to this day.  He lived long enough to see his style of painting go out of fashion. How galling for an artist of his genius to realize he'd outlived his welcome. 

Today Sargent's prodigous talent is once again revered.

To read more about Sargent and his work, please use this link.

It's Veterans Day - 11/11/11

Painting by John Singer Sargent.

Pause a moment and give thanks to those war veterans who have fought and sacrified so much, now and in the past, in the name of the United States of America. God bless them.

Flag painting by Childe Hassam.

Saturday Salon: A Favorite Painting

How's this for a seasonal sort of portrait? Dr. Pozzi at Home by John Singer Sargent. (1856 - 1925) Dr. Samuel Pozzi (1846 -1918) was a leading gynecologist (Sarah Bernhart was a patient) and all around Renaissance man, considered a bit of a dandy in his time (well, the glorious red robe might tell us that at first glance), though his many intellectual pursuits (he was a staunch supporter of Darwin's work as well as prominent in the struggle to have Alfred Dreyfus's conviction overturned) certainly adds weight to the notion that he was much more than just an empty fashion plate. You can read more about the fascinating Dr. Pozzi here. The good doctor may have led a fairly dramatic life, but not any more so than the way he left it: murdered by a deranged patient in 1918.

The most striking thing, I think, about the portrait is the elegant length of blindingly red robe which captures the eye and doesn't let go. In my personal opinion, red is a very difficult color to paint well, whether it's fabric or flowers or fire engines - this is a masterful handling of the color. And my goodness, the length of the doctor's body, very impressive. I wonder how tall he actually was in life. Again I think, Sargent's penchant for elongating the human body is on display here. Personally, I love this about his style - it adds an odd note of otherworldly 'impossibility' to the strength and beauty of the portrait.

To read more about Sargent and his work, please go here.

To see a video of Sargent's work, please go here.

Saturday Salon: A Favorite Painting

Painting of Paul Cesar Helleu Sketching With His Wife by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) A less formal approach done in what appears to me to be a fast, brushstroke style closer, perhaps, to an impressionist's outlook than in most of Sargent's other work. I have to admit I'm very fond of paintings of artists at work, and this one is especially pleasing to me. (There's a similarity in subject matter to last week's painting - Leighton's Painter's Honeymoon in that the artist's wife is included and both men are sketching.)

On first glance (and in my subjective opinion), this Sargent is all about the artist, Paul Cesar Helleu's right arm. That raised pinkie finger. Every time I see this painting I see that arm moving, that finger held aloft in the most graceful manner as the brush moves quickly across the canvas. It's all about the balance of that raised pinkie. While there's frowzy movement in the various grasses, it's the movement of that hand that holds my interest and, secondly - the comfortable and accommodating angle of the painter's body as he goes about his work. The grumpy boredom of the wife with all this going on next to her, excluding her, is, however, to be understood.

Self portrait of Sargent looking very bon-vivant and confident of his artist's 'look'. I like it. To read about John Singer Sargent and see more of his work, please go here. For a gorgeous video of Sargent's work, please go here.