Sargent's Venice

by Richard Ormond and Warren Adelson

• ISBN13: 9780300117172
• ISBN10: 0300117175
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2007-01-19
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

John Singer Sargent returned to Venice many times during his life, endlessly fascinated with this enchanting city. In paintings filled with vivid colors and dazzling light, he sought to capture its vitality and unique ambience, often working while afloat in a gondola. This gorgeously illustrated book presents nearly seventy of Sargent's oil and watercolor paintings of Venice, many of them famous but others only rarely seen. The book also contains fascinating new photographs of actual sites depicted in Sargent's paintings. Sargent's early works in Venice were created in 1880-1882, and he undertook a second, larger body of work in the city during visits from 1900 to 1913. His responses to Veniceits local figures, its buildings and waterways, its extraordinary lightreflect his changing interests over time as well as his lifelong ability to extend his own reach as a creative artist. The book considers various aspects of Sargent's work and milieu in a series of informative essays by international scholars. They discuss the evolution of Sargent's style, the topography of his work in Venice, his connections with Henry James and other Americans in Venice, Italian artists in Venice in the nineteenth century, and American artists in Venice in the nineteenth century.

Author Biography

Richard L. Ormond, formerly director of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, is an independent art historian living in London. He is the coauthor of books on Sargent, Landseer, Winterhalter, and Lord Leighton, and he is a great-nephew of John Singer Sargent. Warren Adelson is owner of Adelson Galleries in New York City.

Table of Contents

A topographical love affair	p. 10
Sargent's life : routes to Venice	p. 26
Map : Venice around 1900	p. 70
Down the grand canal, 1900-1913	p. 72
"A knock-down insolence of talent" : Sargent, James, and Venice	p. 140
The international milieu	p. 160
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