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Overview
The remarkable portraits for which John Singer Sargent is most famous are only one aspect of a career that included landscapes, watercolors, figure subjects, and murals. Even within portraiture, his style ranged from bold experiments to studied formality. And the subjects of his paintings were as varied as his styles, including the leaders of fashionable society, rural laborers, city streets, remote mountains, and the front lines of World War I. This beautiful book surveys and evaluates the extraordinary range of Sargent's work, and reproduces 150 of his paintings in color. It accompanies a spectacular international exhibition—the first major retrospective of the artist's career since the memorial exhibitions that followed his death.
Sargent (1856-1925) was a genuinely international figure. Born of American parents, he grew up in Europe and forged his early reputation in Paris. Later, he established himself in England and the United States as the leading portraitist of the day, and traveled widely in North Africa and the Middle East. Contributors to this book assess Sargent's career in three essays. Richard Ormond presents a biographical sketch and, in a second essay, reviews Sargent's development as an artist. Mary Crawford Volk explores his thirty-year involvement with painting murals—in particular the works at the Boston Public Library and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts that Sargent regarded as his greatest achievement.
The book arranges Sargent's paintings into sections that reflect every phase and aspect of his career. We encounter, for example, such famous early works as Oyster Gatherers of Cancale, Sargent's robust and brilliantly lit scene of fishing life in Brittany. We see many of his greatest American and English portraits, including his daringly posed portrait of Bostonian Isabella Stewart Gardner and his audacious painting of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, which caused a sensation in London in 1893. The book also includes important late works such as Gassed, his monumental painting of soldiers blinded by mustard gas on the western front, and many of his ambitious murals in Boston.
Sargent is a visually stunning, beautifully written, and perceptive work on one of the most important and admired artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Synopsis
The remarkable portraits for which John Singer Sargent is most famous are only one aspect of a career that included landscapes, watercolors, figure subjects, and murals. Even within portraiture, his style ranged from bold experiments to studied formality. And the subjects of his paintings were as varied as his styles, including the leaders of fashionable society, rural laborers, city streets, remote mountains, and the front lines of World War I. This beautiful book surveys and evaluates the extraordinary range of Sargent's work, and reproduces 150 of his paintings in color. It accompanies a spectacular international exhibition--the first major retrospective of the artist's career since the memorial exhibitions that followed his death.Sargent (1856-1925) was a genuinely international figure. Born of American parents, he grew up in Europe and forged his early reputation in Paris. Later, he established himself in England and the United States as the leading portraitist of the day, and traveled widely in North Africa and the Middle East. Contributors to this book assess Sargent's career in three essays. Richard Ormond presents a biographical sketch and, in a second essay, reviews Sargent's development as an artist. Mary Crawford Volk explores his thirty-year involvement with painting murals--in particular the works at the Boston Public Library and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts that Sargent regarded as his greatest achievement.The book arranges Sargent's paintings into sections that reflect every phase and aspect of his career. We encounter, for example, such famous early works as Oyster Gatherers of Cancale, Sargent's robust and brilliantly lit scene of fishing life in Brittany. We seemany of his greatest American and English portraits, including his daringly posed portrait of Bostonian Isabella Stewart Gardner and his audacious painting of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, which caused a sensation in London in 1893. The book also includes important late works such as Gassed, his monumental painting of soldiers blinded by mustard gas on the western front, and many of his ambitious murals in Boston.Sargent is a visually stunning, beautifully written, and perceptive work on one of the most important and admired artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Alexander Eliot
Produced as a catalogue for the historic John Singer Sargent exhibition which opened at London's Tate Gallery and is now at Washington's National Gallery, this heavy, splashy tome has 160 color plates, 80 halftones and oodles of satisfyingly informative notes. Its two editors and the four contributors to the volume keep their personal opinions and emotional reactions to themselves. Theirs is not to reason why, but rather to take us on a scholarly gallop down the valley of this flamboyant master's massive oeuvre - including his lovely watercolors and miserable murals as well as the portraits that made his fame. -- Washington Times
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Though some observers now insist that John Singer Sargent did not live up to the promise he exhibited early in his career -- that he took the safe route in specializing in portraits of the upper crust -- there is still to be found in his body of work a great deal of variety. In addition to portraits, Sargent painted landscapes, watercolors, figure subjects, and murals; his subjects included rural laborers, city streets, and the front lines of World War I. John Singer Sargent, the accompanying catalogue to an expansive traveling exhibition of the artist's work, explores in depth Sargent's life and artistic output and includes more than 250 illustrations, 171 in color.The Bloomsbury Review
Admirers of Sargent will welcome John Singer Sargent and read it with the same relish and thoroughness that went into its writing. It is an intellectual and visual feast.— Gary Michael
The Bloomsbury Review -
Admirers of Sargent will welcome John Singer Sargent and read it with the same relish and thoroughness that went into its writing. It is an intellectual and visual feast.The Bloomsbury Review
Admirers of Sargent will welcome John Singer Sargent and read it with the same relish and thoroughness that went into its writing. It is an intellectual and visual feast.— Gary Michael