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 :. | Portrait of Charles Vane Tempest Stewart | An Out of Doors Study | Poppies | The Wyndham Sisters | Sir Frank Swettenham |
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William Woodward
(1 May 1859 - 17 November 1939) was a U.S. artist and educator, best known for his impressionist paintings of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States. Woodward was born in Seekonk, Massachusetts. His younger brother Ellsworth Woodward also became a notable artist. William Woodward studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design, and later at the Academie Julian where he received instruction from Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre. View of the Napoleon House in New Orleans, 1904In 1884 Woodward was hired to teach fine art, mechanical drawing, and architectural drawing at Tulane University in New Orleans. He became interested in the history and architecture of the city, especially the old French Quarter, which at the time had become largely neglected with many of the historic structures in a state of decay. In 1895 he led a successful campaign to save the Cabildo from demolition. His series of paintings of French Quarter scenes helped shape awareness of the neighborhood's architectural heritage and spurred the formation of the Vieux Carre Commission to help preserve it. He started teaching architectural engineering at Tulane in 1894 and helped found the Tulane School of Architecture in 1907, as well as the Newcomb School of Art. In 1921 he suffered an accident and used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He retired from Tulane the following year, and in 1923 moved to Biloxi, Mississippi. He invented the fiberloid dry etching process. He continued to paint and produce etchings for the rest of his life.