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 :. | Sargent Ada Rehan | The Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain | The Guidecca | Fete Familiale | The Sulphur Match |
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Gonzales Coques
1615 - 1684 was a Flemish Baroque painter He was the son of Pieter Willemsen Coques, a respectable Flemish citizen, and not, as his name might imply, a Spaniard, was born in Antwerp. In 1626?C28 he entered the studio of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and subsequently studied with David II Rijckaert.He is primarily known as a painter of small cabinet conversation pieces, a type of elegant informal group portrait that he is credited with inventing. The influence of Anthony van Dyck resulted in his nickname "Little van Dyck". After a period of travel, probably to England where Van Dyck was active, he entered Antwerp's Guild of St. Luke in 1640?C41. He was married twice, first to Ryckaert's daughter Catharina, and then to Catharina Rysheuvels. He was a member of two rhetorician guilds in the city, and twice he was made president of the painters' guild. This small portraits were in great demand with both the bourgeoisie and nobility.Patrons included Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange and John of Austria the Younger. One of his canvases in the gallery at the Hague represents a suite of rooms hung with pictures, in which the artist himself may be seen at a table with his wife and two children, surrounded by masterpieces composed and signed by several contemporaries. Partnership in painting was common amongst the small masters of the Antwerp school; and it has been truly said of Coques that he employed Jacob von Arthois for landscapes, Anton Ghering and Willem Schubart von Ehrenberg for architectural backgrounds, Hendrik Steenwijck the younger for interiors, and Pieter Gysels for still life and flowers; but the model upon which Coques formed himself was Van Dyck,
cesar franck
For playwright Frances Burney (1776 C 1828), niece of novelist Fanny Burney Madame d'Arblay 1752-1840, see Frances Burney (1776?C1828)
jan maurits quinckhard
1688-1772