John Singer Sargent in Venice

 Venetian Water Carriers
c. 1880, 1882
Worcester Art Museum, MA
Oil on canvas

Although seemingly informal, if not spontaneous, in both design and execution, Venetian Water Carriers is actually carefully conceived. Within a composition centered around rectangular forms (the door and its frame, the well and its base), Sargent subtly balanced the figure of the woman straining to carry a pail with the tilt of the door hanging off its hinges. With equal mastery he varied his technique, using exacting strokes of the brush, fluidly applied, to define individual pavement stones and building up rough layers of color to simulate the peeling plaster wall.

Santa Maria della Salute
John Singer Sargent 1904 
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York
Transparent watercolor with small touches of opaque watercolor over graphite on off-white, thick, rough-textured wove paper 

The Santa Maria della Salute is one of the significant buildings of Venice. Sargent painted it a number of times, but never full-on or complete. 

He characterized his paintings in Venice as "snapshots" and wanted very much to capture the feel of the place from an "every-man's" point of view and not necessarily from the typical tourist vantage. 

Campo dei Frari, Venice 
John Singer Sargent 1880
The Corcoran Gallery of Art. Watercolor over pencil with gouache on cream wove paper
Campo means public square or space, so this is the courtyard right off the canal facing the church Frari. 

Sargent's early watercolors can be significantly different in tone to his later work. Generally you see  careful brushwork and tight, small, and much more controlled washes of color than his later work. He often, but not always, used this medium in preparatory sketches to help him solidify his ideas on what he wanted to do in his oils. This painting was shown at the Paris Salon in May 1881, making it one of the first watercolors Sargent ever displayed in public. As you look at the painting, we are sitting in a gondola facing the courtyard. The church can be seen, in part only, to the right. The signature circle window and arched side doorway being the most significant. 

Under the Rialto Bridge
John Singer Sargent 1909 
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Transparent and opaque watercolor over graphite pencil on paper

Sargent's painting, of course, is under the bridge, and his interest, besides the nice composition, is the play of light on the water and how the shadow of the bridge effects that.

The Rialto
John Singer Sargent 1909
Private collection
Oil on canvas


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gallhof

Image
Wilhelm Gallhof (1878 – 1918, German), The Coral Chain His motifs fit into the zeitgeist of the new beginnings before the First World War and anticipated the lifestyle of the Roaring Twenties . Gallhof fell as a soldier at the end of the First World War at the age of about 40. Lying Nude Nude Standing Nude Nude before a Mirror, 1910   The Temptation Of The Knight, 1910   Halbakt (Semi-nude) Female Nude Standing and Turned to the Left
Read more

Renoir (1841-1919) - three dances and his wife

Image
  Dance at Bougival, 1883, Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Suzanne Valadon is the models. Originally a trapeze artist, she became an artist's model after an injury ended her performing career; however, she is best remembered as a successful painter herself.   Dance in the City, 1883, Musée d'Orsay Suzanne Valadon is the model.  Dance in the Country, 1883, Musée d'Orsay The woman is Aline Charigot, who later became the wife of the painter.  Portrait of Madame Renoir (a portrait of Aline Charigot, Renoir's wife), 1885, Philidalphia Museum of Art Blonde Bather, 1882, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli (Turin, Italy) Aline Charigot, his girl friend traveling with him to Italy and  later to become Renoir's wife. An earlier version of Blonde Bather, 1881, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts In 1926 the American art collector Sterling Clark purchased the painting after some uncertainty for $100,000. It has been over-cleaned t...
Read more

Kasparides and Gerome

Image
Edouard Kasparides  (1858-1926) Austrian) The penitent Mary Magdalene in the cave, 1890 Oil on canvas, s igned and dated lower right: Ed. Kasparides The Harem Bath,  Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824-1904), The Harem Bath, “Harem’de Yıkananlar” ( Les Baigneuses du Harem ),1901, Dickinson Gallery Collection When Jean-Léon Gérôme visited Egypt for the first time, he was amazed by what he saw and when we look at it now, he began to paint his breathtaking Orientalist paintings. Gérôme's works covered a number of themes such as history, Greek mythology, and portraiture. Most of these included magnificent nude female figures bearing his signature. These figures, whose bodies are as bright as the marbles detailed in his paintings, are included in the scenes he depicts in a theatrical way. Gérôme became one of the most valuable painters of the time due to this success he exhibited in his paintings. Some of his paintings were so successful that they became symbols of the Orientalist era....
Read more