With impressive new scholarship and many previously unpublished, color-drenched images, this gloriously beautiful book reveals a new aspect of John Singer Sargent's remarkable career. Although best known for his dazzling society portraits, Sargent's landscape oil paintings and watercolors of his travels constituted a far more important aspect of his work than previously realized--collected here in an invaluable chronology, along with letters, diaries, and photos. 250 illustrations, 200 in color.
"From 1874 to 1882, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) produced more than 200 paintings and water-colours aside from portraiture that chart his development as an artist. The breadth of his achievement includes figures in landscape settings, architectural studies, seascapes, subject paintings, and studies after old masters. From his powerful studies of models in Paris in the mid-1870s to his compelling paintings set in Venice in the early 1880s, the works published in this volume of the catalogue raisonne show the variety of his aesthetic responses." "Working in the studio and en plein air, Sargent travelled widely during the eight years covered in this volume, painting in Paris, Brittany, Capri, Spain, North Africa and Venice." "This is the first time that Sargent's early work has been mapped so comprehensively. With very few exceptions, this book illustrates all the pictures under discussion in colour. Each painting, including several which have never been published before, is documented in depth with full provenance, exhibition history and bibliography. Original research of primary documents and on-site investigations uncovered much new information, presented in critical discussions of subject matter, dating, style, and significance in the artist's career. The volume reproduces a wealth of Sargent's preliminary and related drawings and of comparative works by other artists." --Book Jacket.
An exhibition catalog chronicles the American painter's progress as an artist in Europe and the United States, and includes 155 color reproductions of his portraits and landscapes
