Portrait of John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent Painting Reproductions 2 of 12

1856-1925

American Impressionist Painter

John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 - April 14, 1925) was the most successful portrait painter of his era, as well as a gifted landscape painter and watercolorist. He was an American expatriate who lived most of his life in Europe. Sargent was born in Florence, Italy to American parents. He studied in Italy and Germany, and then in Paris under Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran.

Biography and work
Sargent's portraits subtly capture the individuality and personality of the sitters; his most ardent admirers think he is matched in this only by Diego Velazquez, who was one of Sargent's great influences. The Spanish master's spell is apparent in Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882, a haunting interior which echoes Velazquez' Las Meninas. Sargent's Portrait of Madame X, done in 1884, is now considered one of his best works, and was the artist's personal favorite. However, at the time it was unveiled in Paris at the 1884 Salon, it aroused such a negative reaction that it prompted Sargent to move to London. Many years before the Mme. X. scandal of 1884, he painted exotic beauties such as Rosina Ferrara of Capri, and the Spanish expatriate model, Carmela Bertagna.
Although Sargent lived in the United States for less than one year, some of his best work is in the U.S., including his decorations for the Boston Public Library. He also completed portraits of two U.S. presidents: Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Sargent is usually not thought of as an Impressionist painter, but he sometimes used impressionistic techniques to great effect, and his Claude Monet Painting at the Edge of a Wood is rendered in his own version of the impressionist style.

Sargent painted a series of three portraits of Robert Louis Stevenson. The second, Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and his Wife (1885), was one of his best known.

During the greater part of Sargent's career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolours, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. About 1910 Sargent forsook portrait painting and focused on landscapes in his later years; he also sculpted later in life. As a concession to the insatiable demand of wealthy patrons for portraits, however, he continued to dash off rapid charcoal portrait sketches for them, which he called "Mugs". Forty-six of these, spanning the years 1890-1916, were exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1916.

In a time when the art world focused, in turn, on Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism, Sargent practiced his own form of Realism, which brilliantly referenced Velazquez, Van Dyck, and Gainsborough. His seemingly effortless facility for paraphrasing the masters in a contemporary fashion led to a stream of commissioned portraits of remarkable virtuosity. Thus, he was dismissed as an anachronism at the time of his death, but appreciation of his art has since grown steadily, especially following a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1986.

John Singer Sargent is interred in Brookwood Cemetery near Woking, Surrey.

Relationships
Sargent developed a close friendship with fellow painter Paul Cesar Helleu. They met in Paris in 1878 when Singer was 22 and Helleu was 18. Sargent painted both Helleu and his wife Alice on several occasions.

Sargent was extremely private regarding his personal life, although the painter Jacques-Emile Blanche, who was one of his early sitters, said after his death that Sargent's sex life "was notorious in Paris, and in Venice, positively scandalous. He was a frenzied bugger." The truth of this may never be established. However most scholars now presume he was homosexual; not only because of his personal associations (such as with Prince Edmond de Polignac and Count Robert de Montesquiou), but because of the way his sensibility shaped his art. This includes not only the sensuality of his male nudes (most particularly his portrait of Thomas E. McKeller), but also the exotic 'otherness' implicit in his general work. It is been suggested that it was this quality which appealed to the sympathies of his many Jewish clients which he painted in the 1890s.

270 Sargent Paintings

A Dinner Table at Night (The Glass of Claret), 1884 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

A Dinner Table at Night (The Glass of Claret) 1884

Oil Painting
$606
Canvas Print
$55.49
SKU: SAR-1726
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 51.4 x 66.7 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, USA

Garden Study of the Vickers Children, 1884 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Garden Study of the Vickers Children 1884

Oil Painting
$806
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-1727
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 137.8 x 91.6 cm
Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan, USA

Fete Familiale: The Birthday Party, 1887 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Fete Familiale: The Birthday Party 1887

Oil Painting
$785
Canvas Print
$62.55
SKU: SAR-1728
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 61 x 73.7 cm
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota, USA

Luxembourg Gardens at Twilight, 1879 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Luxembourg Gardens at Twilight 1879

Oil Painting
$785
Canvas Print
$60.33
SKU: SAR-1729
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 73.6 x 92.7 cm
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota, USA

Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood, c.1885 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood c.1885

Oil Painting
$599
Canvas Print
$53.89
SKU: SAR-1730
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 54 x 64.8 cm
Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, c.1885/86 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose c.1885/86

Oil Painting
$1640
Canvas Print
$67.39
SKU: SAR-1731
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 174 x 153.7 cm
Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Home Fields, c.1885 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Home Fields c.1885

Oil Painting
$597
Canvas Print
$56.74
SKU: SAR-1732
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 73 x 96.5 cm
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan, USA

Millet's Garden, 1886 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Millet's Garden 1886

Oil Painting
$541
SKU: SAR-1733
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection

Poppies, 1886 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Poppies 1886

Oil Painting
$785
SKU: SAR-1734
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection

In the Orchard, c.1883/85 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

In the Orchard c.1883/85

Oil Painting
$570
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-1735
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 61 x 73.6 cm
Private Collection

Roses, c.1886 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Roses c.1886

Oil Painting
$328
SKU: SAR-1736
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection

The Old Chair, c.1886 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

The Old Chair c.1886

Oil Painting
$541
SKU: SAR-1737
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection

Two Women Asleep in a Punt under the Willows, 1887 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Two Women Asleep in a Punt under the Willows 1887

Oil Painting
$662
SKU: SAR-1738
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: unknown
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal

Mrs Charles E. Inches (Louise Pomeroy), 1887 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Mrs Charles E. Inches (Louise Pomeroy) 1887

Oil Painting
$785
Canvas Print
$52.59
SKU: SAR-1739
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 86.3 x 60.6 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Robert Louis Stevenson 1887

Oil Painting
$747
Canvas Print
$62.83
SKU: SAR-1740
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 51 x 61.8 cm
The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, USA

A Backwater, Calcot Mill near Reading, 1888 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

A Backwater, Calcot Mill near Reading 1888

Oil Painting
$597
Canvas Print
$56.74
SKU: SAR-1741
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 51.4 x 68.6 cm
Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland, USA

A Morning Walk, 1888 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

A Morning Walk 1888

Oil Painting
$559
Canvas Print
$54.94
SKU: SAR-1742
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 67.3 x 50 cm
Private Collection

Paul Helleu Sketching with His Wife, 1889 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Paul Helleu Sketching with His Wife 1889

Oil Painting
$785
Canvas Print
$62.14
SKU: SAR-1743
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 66 x 80.7 cm
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA

A Boating Party, c.1889 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

A Boating Party c.1889

Oil Painting
$785
SKU: SAR-1744
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: unknown
Rhode Island Museum of Art, Providence, USA

Mrs. Edward L. Davis and Her Son Livingston Davis, 1890 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Mrs. Edward L. Davis and Her Son Livingston Davis 1890

Oil Painting
$913
Canvas Print
$51.88
SKU: SAR-1745
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 218.8 x 122.6 cm
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, USA

Miss Helen Duinham, 1892 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Miss Helen Duinham 1892

Oil Painting
$926
SKU: SAR-1746
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection

Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, c.1892/93 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Lady Agnew of Lochnaw c.1892/93

Oil Painting
$841
Canvas Print
$59.92
SKU: SAR-1747
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 127 x 101 cm
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children, 1896 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children 1896

Oil Painting
$1378
Canvas Print
$50.65
SKU: SAR-1748
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 201.4 x 134 cm
Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Mrs. George Swinton, 1897 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Mrs. George Swinton 1897

Oil Painting
$1226
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-1749
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 231 x 124 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

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