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 :. | The Sketchers | Portrait of Madame X | The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit | mme edouard pailleron | Alice Vanderbilt Shepard |
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Frederick william watts
1800-1862
Jan van den Hecke
(1620-1684) was a Flemish Baroque painter. According to Houbraken he painted landscapes, which he populated with animals and other figures himself. He also made flower and fruit still lifes and could paint gold, silver, crystal, and porcelain quite well. He spent a long period travelling and working in Italy, which is noticeable in his landscapes. According to the RKD he was registered in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as an apprentice in 1636 and learned to paint from Abraham Hack, who also taught his contemporary, the flower painter Hieronymus Galle. In 1641 Van den Hecke was registered as a master of the guild. From 1653-1658 he was in Italy, but somewhere in the mid-50's he went back and forth to Belgium, since he is also registered in Brussels during that period. He died the same year as his wife Maria Adriana Heijens; when they died they left three children; Jan (II), aged 24, Maria, aged 21, and Peeter, aged 20. Van den Hecke's pupil Peeter de Clerc eventually became a master painter in the guild. Van den Hecke's son Jan van den Hecke II became a popular flower painter.
Edouard Vuillard
1868-1940 French Edouard Vuillard Galleries Jean-Edouard Vuillard, the son of a retired captain, spent his youth at Cuiseaux (Saone-et-Loire); in 1878 his family moved to Paris in modest circumstances. After his father\'s death, in 1884, Vuillard received a scholarship to continue his education. In the Lycee Condorcet Vuillard met Ker Xavier Roussel (also a future painter and Vuillard\'s future brother in law), Maurice Denis, musician Pierre Hermant, writer Pierre Veber and Lugne-Poe. On Roussel\'s advice he refused a military career and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he met Pierre Bonnard. In 1885, Vuillard left the Lycee Condorcet and joined his closest friend Roussel at the studio of painter Diogene Maillart. There, Roussel and Vuillard received the rudiments of artistic training.