Portrait of John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent Painting Reproductions 7 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

Simplon Pass, 1911 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Simplon Pass 1911

Oil Painting
$673
Canvas Print
$59.79
SKU: SAR-15254
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 71.4 x 91.5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA

Mrs. Charles Deering, 1877 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Mrs. Charles Deering 1877

Oil Painting
$709
Canvas Print
$62.41
SKU: SAR-15255
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 56 x 45.7 cm
Colby College Museum of Art, Maine, USA

Rainy Day on the Yacht, 1924 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Rainy Day on the Yacht 1924

Paper Art Print
$47.83
SKU: SAR-15256
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 33.6 x 53.3 cm
Colby College Museum of Art, Maine, USA

My Dining Room, c.1883/86 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

My Dining Room c.1883/86

Oil Painting
$590
Canvas Print
$62.83
SKU: SAR-15257
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 73.6 x 60.3 cm
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, USA

Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, c.1904 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Santa Maria della Salute, Venice c.1904

Oil Painting
$696
Canvas Print
$52.86
SKU: SAR-15258
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 64.2 x 92.4 cm
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Shadows on a wall in Corfu, 1909 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Shadows on a wall in Corfu 1909

Oil Painting
$488
Canvas Print
$59.09
SKU: SAR-15259
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 71.8 x 56.2 cm
Private Collection

The Marchioness of Cholmondeley, 1989 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

The Marchioness of Cholmondeley 1989

Oil Painting
$813
Canvas Print
$57.56
SKU: SAR-15260
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 93 x 71 cm
Private Collection

Portrait of Mademoiselle Suzanne Poirson, 1884 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Portrait of Mademoiselle Suzanne Poirson 1884

Oil Painting
$746
Canvas Print
$58.12
SKU: SAR-15261
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection

Church of St. Stae, Venice, 1913 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Church of St. Stae, Venice 1913

Oil Painting
$721
Canvas Print
$59.92
SKU: SAR-15262
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection

Portrait of a Capri Girl, 1878 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Portrait of a Capri Girl 1878

Oil Painting
$603
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-15263
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 43.2 x 30.5 cm
Private Collection

Palazzo Labia, Venice, 1903 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Palazzo Labia, Venice 1903

Oil Painting
$502
Canvas Print
$59.50
SKU: SAR-15264
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection

Vespers, 1909 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Vespers 1909

Oil Painting
$638
Canvas Print
$58.95
SKU: SAR-15265
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 71 x 91.5 cm
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Theodore Roosevelt, 1903 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Theodore Roosevelt 1903

Oil Painting
$900
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-15266
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 147.6 x 101.6 cm
White House Museum, Washington, USA

Helen Sears, 1895 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Helen Sears 1895

Oil Painting
$827
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-15267
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 167.3 x 91.4 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Venetian Glass Workers, c.1880/82 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Venetian Glass Workers c.1880/82

Oil Painting
$777
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-15268
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 56.5 x 84.5 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

The Garden Wall, 1910 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

The Garden Wall 1910

Paper Art Print
$49.84
SKU: SAR-15269
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 40 x 52 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Robert de Cevrieux, 1879 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Robert de Cevrieux 1879

Oil Painting
$803
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-15270
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 84.4 x 48 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Elizabeth Allen Marquand, 1887 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Elizabeth Allen Marquand 1887

Oil Painting
$911
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-15271
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 169 x 107 cm
Art Museum at Princeton University, New Jersey, USA

The Mosquito Net, 1912 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

The Mosquito Net 1912

Oil Painting
$715
Canvas Print
$61.03
SKU: SAR-15272
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 57.5 x 72.4 cm
White House Museum, Washington, USA

Henry Cabot Lodge, 1890 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Henry Cabot Lodge 1890

Oil Painting
$821
Canvas Print
$51.34
SKU: SAR-15273
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 127 x 84.5 cm
Public Collection

Mrs. Cecil Wade, 1886 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Mrs. Cecil Wade 1886

Oil Painting
$992
Canvas Print
$62.83
SKU: SAR-15274
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 167.6 x 137.8 cm
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, USA

Gassed, 1919 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Gassed 1919

Oil Painting
$1043
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-15275
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 231 x 611 cm
Public Collection

Simplon Pass: The Tease, 1911 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Simplon Pass: The Tease 1911

Paper Art Print
$50.22
SKU: SAR-15276
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 40 x 52.4 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Rio dei Mendicanti, Venice, c.1909 by Sargent | Painting Reproduction

Rio dei Mendicanti, Venice c.1909

Paper Art Print
$47.83
SKU: SAR-15277
John Singer Sargent
Original Size: 36.5 x 52 cm
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana, USA

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