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 :. | Bedouin Women | James Kitson | Still Life with Daffodils (mk18) | Frederick Law Olmsted | El Jaleo |
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Mosler, Henry
American Painter, 1841-1920 United States artist, was born in New York, the family removing to Cincinnati when he was about ten years old. Studying drawing by himself, he became a draughtsman for a comic paper, the Omnibus (Cincinnati), in 1855; in 1859-1861 he studied under James Henry Beard, and in 1862-63, during the Civil War, was an art correspondent of Harper's Weekly. In 1863 he went to Desseldorf, where for almost three years he was at the Royal Academy schools; he subsequently went to Paris, where he studied for a short time under Ernest Hebert. His "Le Retour," from the Paris Salon of 1879, was the first American picture ever bought for the Luxembourg. He received a silver medal in Paris 1889, and gold medals at Paris, 1888, and Vienna, 1893.
UDEN, Lucas van
Flemish painter (b. 1595, Antwerpen, d. 1672, Antwerpen). Flemish painter, draughtsman and engraver. He was the son of Artus van Uden (b 1544), town painter of Antwerp, and grandson of Pieter van Uden (i) ( fl 1553), founder of a noted tapestry and silk factory in the city. Lucas was probably trained by his father and in 1626-7 was enrolled in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke as a 'master's son'. On 14 February 1627 he married Anna van Woelput (d 1667). On 31 December 1649 he was registered as no longer living in the city,
Nuncques, William Degouve de
Belgian Symbolist Painter, 1867-1935 was a Belgian painter. He was born at Montherme, the Ardennes, France, of an old aristocratic family, After the Franco-Prussian war (1870C71), his parents settled in Belgium, and he taught himself to paint. In 1894 he married fellow artist Juliette Massin, who introduced him to the circle of Symbolist poets, who had a considerable influence on his style. He belonged to the avant-garde group Les XX and later exhibited at La Libre Esthetique. He travelled widely and painted views of Italy, Austria and France, often of parks at night. His best-known pictures, Pink House (1892), The Angels (1894), and Peacocks (1896), demonstrate the magical quality of his work. Pink House is thought to have been a major influence on Surrealism, especially the paintings of Rene Magritte. He is supposed to have said "To make a painting, all you need to do is to take some paints, draw some lines, and fill the rest up with feelings." A regular exhibitor in Paris, he was championed by Puvis de Chavannes and Maurice Denis. From 1900 to 1902 he and his wife lived in the Balearic Islands, where he painted the rugged coastline and the orange groves. After suffering a religious crisis around 1910, he painted pictures that revealed his tormented state of mind, and during World War I, while a refugee in the Netherlands, he produced only minor works. In 1919 he was overwhelmed by the death of his wife and lost the use of one hand. In 1930 he married the woman who had helped him through the crisis.