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 :. | Grace Elvina, Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston | Two Girls on a Lawn | The Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain | Self-Portrait | Venetian Bead Stringers (mk18) |
Related Artists:
Juan Sanchez Cotan
(June 25, 1560 - September 8, 1627) was a Spanish Baroque painter, a pioneer of realism in Spain. His still lifes, also called bodegones were painted in a strikingly austere style, especially when compared to similar works in Netherlands and Italy. Senchez Coten was born in the town of Orgaz, near Toledo, Spain. He was a friend and perhaps pupil of Blas de Prado, an artist famous for his still lifes whose mannerist style with touches of realism, the disciple developed further. Cotan began by painting altar pieces and religious works. For approximately twenty years, he pursued a successful career in Toledo as an artist, patronized by the city's aristocracy, painting religious scenes, portraits and still lifes. These paintings found a receptive audience among the educated intellectuals of Toledo society. Senchez Cotan executed his notable still lifes around the turn of the seventeenth century, before the end of his secular life. An example (seen above) is Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber (1602, in the San Diego Museum of Art). On August 10, 1603, Juan Sanchez Cotan, then in his forties, closed up his workshop at Toledo to renounce the world and enter the Carthusian monastery Santa Maria de El Paular. He continued his career painting religious works with singular mysticism. In 1612 he was sent to the Granada Charterhouse, he decided to become a monk, and in the following year he entered the Carthusian monastery at Granada as a laybrother. The reasons for this are not clear, though such action was not unusual in Cotan's day.
George Earle
English , born May 25, 1803, London, Eng. -died Jan. 18, 1873, Torquay, Devonshire
fritz von dardel
Fritz Ludvig von Dardel, född den 24 mars 1817 i Neuchâtel, död den 27 maj 1901 i Stockholm, var en schweiziskfödd svensk överintendent, militär, målare och tecknare. Fritz von Dardel var son till godsägaren Georges-Alexandre von Dardel och grevinnan Hedvig Sofia Charlotta Amalia Lewenhaupt. Han var gift med friherrinnan Augusta Silfverschiöld. Släkten von Dardel kommer från Schweiz och adlades i Sverige 1810. Von Dardel blev vid sexton års ålder konstapelkadett vid Vendes artilleriregemente, 1837 underlöjtnant vid Svea livgarde och avancerade till överstelöjtnant i armen 1862. Han blev 1850 adjutant hos kronprinsen och sedan hos Karl XV. Von Dardel var 1858-62 militärattach?? i Paris samt blev 1864 kabinettskammarherre hos Karl XV och samma år överintendent och ordföranden i Akademin för de fria konsterna, av vilken han 1861 invalts till hedersledamot. Dessutom var han ordförande i Nationalmuseums nämnd i 25 år (1867-92). Vid flera konstutställningar i Europa (1867, 1871, 1873 och 1878) samt i Philadelphia (1876) var han juryman. Själv hade von Dardel bedrivit studier på L??on Cogniets och E. Lamis ateljeer i Paris. Fritz von Dardel tillhörde Karl XV:s intima krets och har gjort ett flertal dråpliga, akvarellerade teckningar av personer och händelser vid hovet eller under kungens resor, vidare folklivsbilder samt litografier. Hans dagböcker (se nedan) som utgavs postumt är skrivna på franska och översatta och redigerade av hans söner.