Painting and paintings by John Singer Sargent

My second post from the archives is about John Singer Sargent and his approach to paintings.

Below are past blog posts which are well worth a read to look at the resources I accessed while writing about him in the last 15 years

 

An Artist in His Studio (1904 ) by John Singer Sargent 

Approach to Painting

• Advice on Painting from John Singer Sargent (2015) - about a digital ebook about how Sargent approached his paintings - which references “John Sargent” by the Hon. Evan Charteris - annotated by Thomas Jefferson Kitts
• John Singer Sargent and Drawing - and my drawing class (2007) - includes links to a number of sources commenting on Sargent's drawings

Exhibitions

• Major new Singer Sargent exhibition announced - in London and New York (2014) - about the exhibition below and the artist
• 10 great reasons to see 'Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends' at the NPG (2015) - which was up there with the very top exhibitions I've ever seen at the National Portrait Gallery.

Corfu, Light and Shadows by John Singer Sargent

• Sargent: The Watercolours - a review (2017) - about the first major UK exhibition of watercolours by the Anglo-American artist, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), since 1918 - at Dulwich Picture Gallery
• Sargent and the Beach (2010) - about the exhibition which opened in the Sackler Galleries at the RA in July 2010
  

Galleries

• American Impressionism and Portraiture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2019) - about my visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in October 2019 - and the chance to view paintings by Sargent

Paintings

• Singer Sargent: Where's the place in this painting? (2010) - on The Art of the Landscape)
• San Geremia by John Singer Sargent (2018) - as seen at the preview exhibition of the Rockefeller Collection Auction at Christies in London in March 2018

My John Singer Sargent Project in 2007

In which you get to see me trying to learn about Sargent in January 2007 and then produce artwork from what I've learned.

• John Singer Sargent - the works 

It covers:

• Process: what I'm doing
• Summary: a summary of what I've found out so far
• Books: a note of books about JSS
• John Singer Sargent Links: a list of useful website links for researching JSS (see the end).

• Realism or Impressionism? 
• Sargent in Venice 
• My Singer Sargent Project - in the Piazza San Marco 
• JSS and my gondola - a work in progress 

The thing I noticed most about about JSS's watercolours of gondolas in Venice (he did a lot of them!) was that he was very clear about giving them a defined shape and tended to emphasise the contrast between dark and light values - which is not the same as saying that everything had a hard edge - as it didn't. The canal water was also very simplified and he often used candle wax (or some other form of wax resist to preserve highlights under watercolour washes for the water.

• JSS and my gondola - completed