1856-1925 John Singer Sargent Locations John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 ?C April 14, 1925) was the most successful portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. Before Sargent??s birth, his father FitzWilliam was an eye surgeon at the Wills Hospital in Philadelphia. After his older sister died at the age of two, his mother Mary (n??e Singer) suffered a mental collapse and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic ex-patriates for the rest of their lives. Though based in Paris, Sargent??s parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. While she was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Italy because of a cholera epidemic, and there Sargent was born in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born. After her birth FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wife??s entreaties to remain abroad. They lived modestly on a small inheritance and savings, living an isolated life with their children and generally avoiding society and other Americans except for friends in the art world. Four more children were born abroad of whom two lived past childhood. Though his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, more interested in outdoor activities than his studies. As his father wrote home, ??He is quite a close observer of animated nature.?? Contrary to his father, his mother was quite convinced that traveling around Europe, visiting museums and churches, would give young Sargent a satisfactory education. Several attempts to give him formal schooling failed, owning mostly to their itinerant life. She was a fine amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions. Young Sargent worked with care on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from the Illustrated London News of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his son??s interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career. At thirteen, his mother reported that John ??sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist.?? At age thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Though his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a highly literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music, and literature. He was fluent in French, Italian, and German. At seventeen, Sargent was described as ??willful, curious, determined and strong?? (after his mother) yet shy, generous, and modest (after his father). He was well-acquainted with many of the great masters from first hand observation, as he wrote in 1874, ??I have learned in Venice to admire Tintoretto immensely and to consider him perhaps second only to Michael Angelo and Titian.??  Related Paintings of John Singer Sargent :. | Robert de Cevrieux | Madame X | Mrs. Henry Phipps and Her Grandson Winston | Sargent John Singer Portrait of Two Children aka The Forbes Brothers | Portrait of a Boy |
Related Artists:
Jan Gerritsz. van Bronckhorst
(1603-1661) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver. He is considered today to be a minor member of the Utrecht Caravaggisti group. According to Houbraken, van Bronckhorst apprenticed as an eleven-year-old with the glass engraver Verburgh in Utrecht. He worked with him for 6 months and worked with two other Utrecht glassworkers before embarking on a Grand Tour in 1620. He did not get far before he was offered work in Arras by the glassworker Peeter Matthys. After six months, he continued on to Paris in 1620, where he worked with the glassworker Chamu. He returned to Utrecht in 1622, where Cornelis Poelenburg taught him to paint. He married Catalijntje van Noort in 1626. He frequented the studio of Gerard van Honthorst. In 1647 he moved to Amsterdam where he created the stained glass windows and the organ doors (almost the only area in a Calvinist church where figurative painting was sometimes allowed) of the Nieuwe Kerk (finished in 1655). He has been described as the last of the great stained glass painters in Holland.. Unlike his work for churches, his secular paintings show the influence of Caravaggio, and also show a striking appeal to sensuality. Among his pupils are counted his sons Jan Jansz and Gerrit Jansz, and Cesar van Everdingen.
GRAFF, Anton
Swiss-born German Painter, 1736-1813 Swiss painter, active in Germany. He was a pupil of Johann Ulrich Schellenburg (1709-95) in Winterthur and continued his training with Johann Jakob Haid in Augsburg between 1756 and 1765. He worked for the court painter Leonhard Schneider (1716-62) in Ansbach from 1757 to 1759, producing large numbers of copies of a portrait of Frederick the Great (probably by Antoine Pesne). This was an important step in furthering his career, as were the months he spent in Regensburg (1764-5) painting miniatures of clerics and town councillors. He was court painter to the Elector Frederick-Christian of Saxe-Weimar in Dresden from 1766 and taught at the Hochschule der Bildende Kenste there. In 1771 he travelled to Berlin, where he painted portraits of Jakob Mendelssohn, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and J. G. Sulzer. Sulzer introduced him at court, which resulted in many commissions. He was invited several times to teach at the Akademie der Kenste in Berlin, but he remained in Dresden. He often travelled to Leipzig, and in summer he frequently went to Teplitz
Peter Buell Porter
(August 14, 1773 - March 20, 1844) was an American lawyer, soldier and politician who served as United States Secretary of War from 1828 to 1829. He graduated from Yale College in 1791, studied law in Litchfield, Connecticut, was admitted to the bar, and commenced practice in Canandaigua, New York in 1793. He served as clerk of Ontario County from 1797 to 1804 and was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1802 and again in 1828. In the fall of 1809, Porter moved to Black Rock, New York and was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Eleventh and Twelfth United States Congresses, serving from March 4, 1809 to March 3, 1813, but declined renomination. During his service in Congress, he was a leading figure among Congressional "war hawks" and Chairman of the Committee that recommended preparation for war with Great Britain. At the same time, from 1810 to 1816, he was a member of the Erie Canal Commission, a commission on inland navigation established in 1810 by the New York state Legislature to survey a canal route from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. During the War of 1812, Porter was initially quartermaster general of the New York State Militia from May to October 1812. He participated in and criticized General Alexander Smyth's abortive operations against British Canada in 1812, culminating in a bloodless duel between the two. The historian John R. Elting wrote of the duel, stating "Unfortunately, both missed."[1] He later raised and commanded a brigade of New York militia that incorporated a Six Nations Indian contingent and led his command with distinction. For his actions, he was presented a gold medal under joint resolution of Congress dated November 3, 1814 "for gallantry and good conduct" during the Battle of Chippewa, the Battle of Niagara, and the Battle of Erie. Porter was Secretary of State of New York from February 1815 to February 1816. He was also elected to the Fourteenth United States Congress. Although his term in Congress began on March 4, 1815, the actual Session began only in December, and he took his seat on December 11, 1815. On January 23, 1816, he resigned, having been appointed a Commissioner under the Treaty of Ghent, which caused a controversy as to the constitutionality of sitting in Congress and holding this commissionership at the same time. In 1817, his political friends of Tammany Hall printed ballots with his name and distributed them among their followers to vote for Porter for Governor of New York at the special election which was held after the resignation of Governor Daniel D. Tompkins. DeWitt Clinton, the otherwise unopposed candidate, was fiercely hated by the Tammany organization, and Porter received about 1,300 votes although he was not really running for the office. Porter became a regent of the University of the State of New York in 1824, and served in that capacity until 1830. From May 16, 1828 to March 9, 1829, Porter served as Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President John Quincy Adams, and was an advocate for the removal of Eastern Indians beyond the Mississippi. He moved to Niagara Falls in 1836 and was a presidential elector on the Whig ticket in 1840. He died at Niagara Falls in 1844, and was interred in Oakwood Cemetery. Fort Porter and Porter Avenue at Buffalo were named in his honor.