John Singer Sargent, His Portrait
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Individual Artists
John Singer Sargent, His Portrait Details
From Publishers Weekly Like a suave butler polishing the egos of his wealthy patrons and sitters, Sargent turned out 700 portraits varying greatly in quality, notes Olson. Tired of the tedium of portraiture, he longed to do still lifes and outdoor scenes but got sidetracked into painting huge, mediocre murals that mischanneled his talents. This startling, unconventional view of the chronicler of the Edwardian Age emerges from Olson's richly detailed, thoroughly researched biography. The son of a willful, hypochondriac mother and a taciturn, pessimistic father, Sargent became a workaholic, an outsider, a born observer eager for fame but let down by it. Henry James cleared a path for Sargent to settle in London when he tired of Paris, and the painter's friend Monet taught him to work outdoors on a "floating studio," but through it all Sargent remained strangely elusive, a loner, unfulfilled in his role. Olson (Elinor Wylie: A Life Apart follows Sargent on his jaunts to Morocco and Venice and shows how a short burst of communal life in the Cotswolds art colony pushed him closer to arch-heretic Whistler. Photos. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more From Library Journal Internationally known for his portraits of the rich, the royal, and the famous, expatriate American artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was a workaholic with a prodigious output of some 700 portraits and 2550 watercolors and murals in Boston and Harvard. Olson claims he has the advantage here as a team of scholars has taken over the preparation of a separate catalogue raisonne, leaving him free to concentrate on Sargent's life. And concentrate he does, producing an absorbing, detailed, comprensive biography of this intriguing enigma of a man. Photographs plus a genealogy and the painter's own description of his Boston Public Library decorations are included in the text. A fine biographyand at a price even public libraries can afford. Gloria K. Rensch, formerly with Vigo Cty. P.L., Terre Haute, Ind.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more
Reviews
Very intricate read.