He painted opulent interiors and vacant Moorish Ruins. He painted the back alleys of Venice, sleeping gondoliers, fishing boats and the dusty side streets of Spain. He hiked through the Rocky Mountains with a canvas tent under pouring rain to paint the beauty of waterfalls, and painted near the front lines during World War I to capture the horrors of war. He painted two United States presidents, the aristocracy of Europe, the new and emerging tycoons and barons of businessRockefeller, Sears, Vanderbilt and he painted gypsies, tramps, and street children with the same gusto and passion. Between 1877 (when his work really started taking off) and 1925, he did over 900 oils and more than 2,000 watercolors along with countless charcoal sketch-portraits and endless pencil drawings. Working dawn til dusk in some caseseven on vacations, and sometimes seven days a week. Yet his brilliance was in fusing these elements together and for this he has never fully gotten credit. He always worked within the wide, rich textured pallet of known and established styles. He is often passed by, not studied, or dismissed because he was never a radical artist or trend-setter. He was all of these things and yet he was none of them in total. He was an Impressionist, a Classical Portraitist, a Landscape Artist, a Water Colorist, a Muralist of public art, and even started sculpting at the last of his life. It is hard to put a label on him for he could master so many different painting styles. It was his life and yet he had a deep appreciation for music and all art forms and went out of his way to promote other artistsfor this selflessness he was greatly loved.Įxtremely bright, extremely gifted, an intense hard worker, he was the last great generalist. To describe Sargent is to say that he painted. To be painted by Sargent was to be painted by the best.Īlthough England would be his home, he never stopped traveling and he never stopped painting. Discouraged at the rejection, even considered leaving art at the age of 28, he left Paris and settled (if that word could ever be used for him) in England where he reached the height of his fame. He was the darling of Paris until the scandal of his Madame X painting at the 1884 Salon. He was schooled as a French artist, heavily influenced by the Impressionist movement, the Spanish Master Velazquez, the Dutch Master Frans Hals, and his teacher Carolus-Duran. His parents never settled back in America, not stepping foot in the States himself until right before his 21st birthday to retain his citizenship. He was born in Florence, to American parents and traveled extensively throughout Europe. He was the most celebrated portraitist of his time but left it at the very height of his fame to devote full time to landscape painting, watercolors and public art. He loved his country yet he spent most of his life in Europe. John Singer Sargent was an American painter by birth-right.
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