1856-1925 John Singer Sargent Locations John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 ?C April 14, 1925) was the most successful portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. Before Sargent??s birth, his father FitzWilliam was an eye surgeon at the Wills Hospital in Philadelphia. After his older sister died at the age of two, his mother Mary (n??e Singer) suffered a mental collapse and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic ex-patriates for the rest of their lives. Though based in Paris, Sargent??s parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. While she was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Italy because of a cholera epidemic, and there Sargent was born in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born. After her birth FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wife??s entreaties to remain abroad. They lived modestly on a small inheritance and savings, living an isolated life with their children and generally avoiding society and other Americans except for friends in the art world. Four more children were born abroad of whom two lived past childhood. Though his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, more interested in outdoor activities than his studies. As his father wrote home, ??He is quite a close observer of animated nature.?? Contrary to his father, his mother was quite convinced that traveling around Europe, visiting museums and churches, would give young Sargent a satisfactory education. Several attempts to give him formal schooling failed, owning mostly to their itinerant life. She was a fine amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions. Young Sargent worked with care on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from the Illustrated London News of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his son??s interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career. At thirteen, his mother reported that John ??sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist.?? At age thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Though his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a highly literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music, and literature. He was fluent in French, Italian, and German. At seventeen, Sargent was described as ??willful, curious, determined and strong?? (after his mother) yet shy, generous, and modest (after his father). He was well-acquainted with many of the great masters from first hand observation, as he wrote in 1874, ??I have learned in Venice to admire Tintoretto immensely and to consider him perhaps second only to Michael Angelo and Titian.??  Related Paintings of John Singer Sargent :. | Dennis Miller Bunker Painting at Calcot | Portrait of Millicent Leveson-Gower | Bedouin Women | Mending a Sail | Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth |
Related Artists:
Emil Nolde
German Expressionist Painter, 1867-1956.German painter, watercolourist and printmaker. He was one of the strongest and most independent of the German Expressionists. Nolde belonged to the Dresden-based group known as DIE BR?CKE from 1906 to 1907. Primarily a colourist, he is best known for his paintings in oil, his watercolours and his graphic work. His art was deeply influenced by the stark natural beauty of his north German homeland, and alongside numerous landscapes, seascapes and flower paintings, Nolde also produced works with religious and imaginary subjects.
William Hoare
William Hoare of Bath RA (c. 1707 - 12 December 1792) was an English painter and printmaker, co-founder of the Royal Academy noted for his pastels. Born near Eye, Suffolk, Hoare received a gentlemanes education in Faringdon. He showed a marked aptitude for drawing and was sent to London to study under Giuseppe Grisoni, who had left Florence for London in 1715. When Grisoni returned to Italy in 1728, Hoare went with him, travelling to Rome and continuing his studies under the direction of Francesco Imperiali. He remained in Rome for nine years, returning to London in 1737/8. Failing to establish himself in London, Hoare settled in Bath, an expanding spa town popular with the wealthier classes. He obtained numerous commissions, the most important being for official portraits of social leaders of the day (including George Frideric Handel) and political men. There are several versions of most of these, suggesting that he had a studio, and they were further publicised by the production of mezzotints by leading engravers of the day. Hoare himself was a delicate etcher and published a number of private plates, mostly of family and friends, including Miss Hoare (probably Mary), Christopher Anstey and the 3rd Duke of Beaufort. His pastels were influenced by Rosalba Carriera.
William Turner of Oxford
British, 1789-1862 He probably received his earliest training from William Delamotte, in Oxford. In 1804 he went to London and became a pupil of John Varley, possibly being formally apprenticed. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807; in January 1808 he was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and in November of that year became its youngest full member. He exhibited there annually from 1808 until his death, sending 455 works in all. His passionate, technically complex youthful work was highly acclaimed, yet its promise remained unfulfilled; around 1811 he returned to Oxfordshire and soon established himself as a drawing-master in Oxford.