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 :. | Reading | Maria Kissam Vanderbilt | John Hay | Sargent Jean Joseph Carries | Portrait of Almina Daughter of Asher Wertheimer |
Related Artists:
COUWENBERGH, Christiaen van
Dutch painter, Delft school (b. 1604, Delft, d. 1667, Cologne).
Gustaf Cederstrom
Swedish Painter, 1845-1933,was a Swedish painter, most known for his painting Karl XII:s likfärd (The funeral transport of Charles XII). He was born and raised in Stockholm. His father was Carl Emanuel Cederström and his mother was Carolina Fredrika Theresia af Ugglas. He married Amalia Katarina Jaeder in 1878
Francesco Giuseppe Casanova
(1727-1803) was an Italian painter and a younger brother of Giacomo Casanova. Francesco Casanova Battaglia di cavalleria (oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris)Born in London, he trained in Venice under Francesco Guardi, then was a pupil of Francesco Simonini, a battle painter who took Borgognone as his model. Besides battle-pieces Casanova painted landscapes with figures and cattle, as well as pastoral subjects. He arrived in Paris in 1751, and went to Dresden in the following year, where he remained until 1757, spending his time in copying the finest battle-pieces of the famous Electoral Gallery. On his return to Paris he studied for a time under Charles Parrocel, and was received into the Academy in 1763. He exhibited at the Salon at intervals from that year till 1783, when he again quit France, going to Vienna, where he resided during the remainder of his life. Philip James de Loutherbourg was his pupil for a time.