Books Details
Author : Erica Hirshler Pages : 247 pages Publisher : MFA Publications
Language : ISBN-10 : 0878467912 ISBN-13 : 9780878467914
Books Descriptions
John Singer Sargent's approach to watercolor was unconventional. Going
beyond turn-of-the-century standards for carefully delineated and
composed landscapes filled with transparent washes, his confidently bold,
dense strokes and loosely defined forms startled critics and fellow
practitioners alike. One reviewer of an exhibition in London proclaimed him
"an eagle in a dove-cote"; another called his work "swagger" watercolors.
For Sargent, however, the watercolors were not so much about swagger as
about a renewed and liberated approach to painting. In watercolor, his
vision became more personal and his works more interconnected, as he
considered the way one image--often of a friend or favorite place--
enhanced another. Sargent held only two major watercolor exhibitions in
the United States during his lifetime. The contents of the first, in 1909,
were purchased in their entirety by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The
paintings exhibited in the other, in 1912, were scooped up by the Museum
of
