SARGENT'S BIOGRAPHY
(1856-1925)
John Singer Sargent was an
American painter by birth-right. He loved
his country yet he spent most of his life in 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, water colors and public art.
He was born in
Florence, to American
parents and traveled extensively throughout
Europe. 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 schooled as a French artist,
heavily influenced by the Impressionist movement, the
Spanish Master Velazquez, the
Dutch Master Frans Hals, and his teacher
Carols-Duran . He was the darling of
Paris until the scandal of his
Madame X painting at the
1884 Salon.
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. To be painted by
Sargent was to be painted by the best.
Although England would be his home, he
never stopped traveling and he never stopped painting. To describe
Sargent is to say that he painted. 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 artists -- for this selflessness he was greatly loved.
Extremely bright, extremely gifted, an intense hard worker, he was the last
great generalist. It is hard to put a label on him for he could master so many
different painting styles. 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. He was all of these things and yet he was
none of them in total.
He once said that the knowledge of a technique for an artist, such as
Impressionism, "does not make a man an Artist any more than the knowledge of
perspective does -- it is mearly a refining of one's means towards representing
things and one step further away from the hieroglyph".
He is often passed by, not studied, or dismissed because he was never a
radical artist or trend-setter. He always worked within the wide, rich textured
pallet of known and established styles. Yet his brilliance was in fusing these
elements together and for this he has never fully gotten credit.
His output was prodigious. Working dawn till dusk in some cases -- even on
vacations, and sometimes seven days a week. 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.
He painted two United States presidents,
the aristocracy of Europe, the new and
emerging tycoons and barons of business --
Rockefeller, Sears,
Vanderbilt; and he painted gypsies, tramps, and
street children with the same gusto and passion. 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 the back alleys of
Venice, sleeping gondoliers, fishing boats and the dusty side streets
of Spain. He painted opulent interiors and
vacant
Moorish Ruins. He painted the artists
of his time -- performers, poets, dancers, musicians, and writers --
Robert Louis Stevenson, and
Henry James. He painted the great generals
of the Great War, and the Bedouin nomads in
their camps. He painted grand allegorical murals, and his friends as they
slept.
And he painted . . . .
Where others kept journals, John Singer Sargent
painted his, and his life can easily be chronicled by these records in color and
canvas. He loved people, yet was intensely private. And he loved his family
deeply and devotedly, though he never had a family himself (was childless and
never married). He was simply, a great man and a great Artist.
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