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 :. | Rosina | Sir Frank Swettenham | Reading (mk18) | Portrait of Two Children | The Daughters of Edward D.Boit |
Related Artists:
Max Slevogt
German Impressionist Painter, 1868-1932 German painter, printmaker and illustrator. His father, adjutant and friend of the future Prince Regent, Luitpold (1821-1912), died when Slevogt was just two years old. His mother moved to Werzburg, where he spent his schooldays. Even in his childhood and adolescence, family connections brought Slevogt to Pfalz, to an aunt in Landau and to the Finkler family in Neukastel. Initially he had planned to become a musician, but he began to study painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste in Munich in 1885. His fellow students included Gabriel von Hackl (1843-1926), Karl Raupp (1837-1918), Ludwig Herterich (1856-1932) and Wilhelm von Diez (1839-1907). In 1889 he spent a term at the Academie Julian in Paris. At that time Impressionism had very little effect on him. Following a trip to Italy in 1890 with the painter Robert Breyer (1866-1941) who had befriended him at the Akademie, he began to work independently as a painter in Munich. In 1893 he participated in the first exhibition of the newly founded Munich Secession, exhibiting Wrestling School (1893; Edenkoben, Schloss Villa Ludwigshehe); the judges wanted to refuse this painting as immoral since its entwined and naked men caused offence. In the following years his paintings often appeared harsh and non-academic to conservative Munich circles. At this time Slevogt also made contributions to the journals Jugend and Simplizissimus, which were significant in the development of his graphic work.
VROOM, Hendrick Cornelisz.
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1563-1640. He was one of the founders of Dutch marine painting. Painter and draughtsman. By his own account, he received his early training in Delft, home of his mother's family. Van Mander reports that Hendrick's stepfather, like his father a ceramic artist, forced him to work as a decorator of ceramic vessels, which caused the young artist to leave home and embark on extensive travels in Spain and Italy. After working for ecclesiastical patrons in Florence and Rome, he was employed for at least two years (c. 1585-7) by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, who in October 1587 succeeded Francesco I as Grand Duke of Tuscany. Ferdinando's keen interest in ships and the navy seems to have been a determining factor in Vroom's choice of subject-matter. According to Lanzi, he was known in Rome as 'Lo Spagnolo' (since he had arrived there from Spain). Among his earliest works may be a group of marine paintings attributed to him (Rome, Villa Colonna). His friendship in Rome with Paul Bril, mentioned by van Mander, had no effect on Hendrick's painting style, but Bril's influence is discernible in a group of landscape drawings
LINGELBACH, Johannes
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1622-1674 German painter, active in the Netherlands and Italy. By 1634 his family had settled in Amsterdam, where presumably Lingelbach trained as a painter. According to Houbraken, he visited France in 1642 and arrived in Italy two years later. However, he is not mentioned in any document of 1644, although he is recorded in Rome from 1647 to 1649. The artist left Rome in 1650 and by 1653 was back in Amsterdam, where he remained until his death. Lingelbach is perhaps the only one of the Dutch Italianates with a catalogue of numerous signed and dated works to document his artistic development. The first two signed works are The Blacksmith (1650; Rome, Melmeluzzi priv. col., see Briganti, Trezzani and Laureati, fig. 10.1) and Self-portrait with Violin (1650; Zurich, Ksthaus). Unfortunately no certain works survive from the previous years. Kren (1982) attributed a series of works depicting Roman trades, some formerly ascribed to Pieter van Laer, to Lingelbach's early career. The original group consisted of three small paintings: the Acquavita-seller, the Cake-seller and The Tobacconist (all Rome, Pal. Corsini). While these paintings have some striking points in common with the Melmeluzzi Blacksmith of 1650 and the signed Dentist on Horseback (1651; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), it is still uncertain whether they belong to Lingelbach's pre-1650 work or are by another hand