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 :. | Gondoliers Siesta | Grace Elvina, Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston | Theodore Roosevelt (mk18) | The Boating Party | Rigging |
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Harry Roseland
(c.1867-1950) was one of the most notable painters of the genre painting school around the turn of the 20th century. An American, Roseland was primarily known for paintings centered on poor African-Americans. Roseland was largely self-taught, and never traveled to Europe to study art, as did many of the American artists of his time. However, he did receive instruction from John Bernard Whittaker and later, James Carroll Beckwith. One of his most popular subjects were his paintings of black women fortune tellers who read the palms and tea leaves of white women clients. These paintings were widely reproduced during the early 20th century in the form of postcard sets and large full-colour prints that were distributed as Sunday supplements in newspapers. While known most for his paintings of African Americans, his work encompassed many genres, including seascapes and portraits. He also gained renown for his paintings of laborers in the coastal areas of New England and New York and his many interior paintings. Roseland was born and lived his entire life in Brooklyn.
Axel Haig
Swedish etcher and architectural draughtsman , 1835-1921 Swedish printmaker, painter and architect. He studied shipbuilding in Karlskrona from 1850 to 1856. The following year he joined the shipbuilders Lawrence Hill & Co. in Glasgow, but soon left to study architecture in London, where he worked with the English architect Ewan Christian (1814-95) and with William Burges. Under the influence of Burges he became especially interested in Gothic architecture. In the late 1870s he began etching, with the intention of illustrating a book on Scotland's medieval architecture. Haig contributed illustrations to numerous English magazines, including The Architect. (For Haig's drawing of William Burges's competition entry for the Law Courts, London) In 1882 he was awarded a medal for his etchings at the Paris Salon and elected an honorary member of the Swedish Royal Academy.