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 :. | Portrait of Robert de Cevrieux | Salmon River | Paul Helleu | The Cashmere Shawl (mk18) | The Brook (mk32) |
Related Artists:
Ernst Meisel
painted Gretchen beim Kirchgang in 1894
Arthur Bowen Davies
1862-1928 Arthur Bowen Davies Gallery Arthur Bowen Davies (September 26, 1863 ?C October 24, 1928) was an avant-garde American artist. He was born in Utica, New York and studied at the Chicago Academy of Design from 1879 to 1882. He briefly attended the Art Institute of Chicago and then moved to New York City where he studied at the Art Students League. Davies was a principal organizer of the 1913 Armory Show and was a member of The Eight, a group of painters including five associated with the Ashcan school: William Glackens (1870-1938), Robert Henri (1865-1929), George Luks (1867-1933), Everett Shinn (1876-1953) and John French Sloan (1871-1951), along with Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928), Ernest Lawson (1873-1939) and Maurice Prendergast (1859-1924). Davies is best known for his ethereal figure paintings. He worked as a billboard painter, engineering draftsman, and magazine illustrator.
Robert Loftin Newman
(November 10, 1827 - March 31, 1912). was an American painter and stained-glass designer. He specialized in oil on canvas as his medium. He is sometimes associated with Albert Pinkham Ryder as a painter of mood. His works include Good Samaritan, painted in 1886, Flight into Egypt, Harvest Time, Sailboat Manned by Two Men, and The Bather. He was born in Richmond, Virginia and moved to Clarksville, Tennessee when he was 11 years of age. Later, as a young adult, he studied art in New York, England, and France. Newman served briefly as an artillery lieutenant for the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He died of asphyxiation from a gas leak from a stove on March 31, 1912.