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 :. | At Calcot | Portrait of Louis Alexander Fagan | In the Generalife (mk18) | Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner | In the Luxembourg Gardens |
Related Artists:
GIAMPIETRINO
Italian Painter, known ca.1500-1540
Konstantin Flavitsky
b Moscow, 25 Sept 1830; d St Petersburg, 15 Sept 1866,Russian painter. He completed his studies at the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg in 1855. The influence of Karl Bryullov was central to Flavitsky work. He combined the theatricality of academicism and the elegance of salon painting with a desire to observe a degree of realism in his subjects and to relate history to present events, thereby anticipating new developments in Russian history painting.
Evert Oudendijck
(1650, Haarlem - 1695, Haarlem), was a Dutch Golden Age painter. According to Houbraken he painted stag hunts and other hunting scenes in landscapes, along with the artist "Drossaart". He was the father of Adriaen Oudendijck. According to the RKD he was registered in the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke in 1663 as the pupil of Adriaen van Ostade which would make him about 15 years old at that time.His registration as a member of the guild in 1646 is therefore impossible. Though Evert Oudendijk is listed in the Haarlem guild register as a member in 1646, he probably became a member in 1664 (a year suspiciously lacking member registrations), like other members mistakenly registered in 1646, such as Evert Collier and Egbert van Heemskerck. He is listed two other times in the Haarlem guild; in 1663 (listed as Ostade's pupil "Evert Adriaanszen van Oudendijck") and as painter in 1670.