Sargent's Watercolors: A Study in Sunlight

Some critics reduced his output in these years to travel sketches or chronicles — "rather artist’s memoranda than pictures" and "very rough work," as one summarily put it. But as co-curator Erica Hirshler writes in a scholarly essay in the catalogue, such observers failed to see in his watercolors the "modernist twist of their unconventional angles and cropped compositions."

His unconventional approach is perhaps best seen in his depiction of Venetian architecture, which is rendered in tight views, "showing [his architectural subjects] in fragments instead of as icons." He sees the city from the point of view of the gondoliers and therefore in a new, modern way. He eschews the wider views for the close-up. Writes Hirshler: "His Venice is not composed, but always in motion. It appears haphazardly in snatches of color, in partial forms that loom above the viewer’s low vantage point in a gondola, rocking from the constant action of the sea. Sargent’s Venice is not a city of memory or the imagination but a vivid, contemporary enterprise." (See Venice: Under the Rialto Bridge, 1909, below.) Under the Rialto Bridge, 1909

Sargent may have had modernist tendencies, but he never delved into abstraction. He did, however, share the avant-garde’s fascination with form and color and design, and his works on paper display a liveliness and spontaneity very much in sync with the modern aesthetic. But he was an avowed traditionalist. "Ingres, Raphael and El Greco," he wrote in a letter to a friend, "these are what I like." He didn’t want to be associated with Picasso or Matisse or even Cezanne.

One reviewer dubbed these later works "swagger" watercolors. It was not meant as a compliment, but it’s an apt term. Yes, swagger.

*Editor's Note: We recommend Sargent's Daughters: The Biography of a Painting by co-curator Erica E. Hirshler.

Watercolors:

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). Bedouins, circa 1905–6. Opaque and translucent watercolor, 18 x 12 in. (45.7 x 30.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by Special Subscription, 09.814

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). Simplon Pass: Reading, circa 1911. Opaque and translucent watercolor and wax resist with graphite underdrawing, 20 1/16 x 14 1/16 in. (51 x 35.7 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Hayden Collection — Charles Henry Hayden Fund. Photograph © 2013 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). Venice: Under the Rialto Bridge, 1909. Translucent watercolor and touches of opaque watercolor with graphite underdrawing, 10 7/8 x 19 in. (27.6 x 48.3 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Hayden Collection — Charles Henry Hayden Fund. Photograph © 2013 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Pages: 1 · 2

Culture and Arts, Art and Museums, Travel, Senior Women Web, Articles, Val Castronovo, Authors, What's New Add comments

Sargent's Watercolors: A Study in Sunlight

More Articles