John Singer Sargent Chicago S Gilded Age

"An examination of how the work of the American painter John Singer Sargent was displayed, collected, and influential in the civic and cultural development of Chicago, Illinois during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries"--

In 1916, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) met Thomas Eugene McKeller (1890-1962) a young African American elevator attendant at Boston's Hotel Vendome. McKeller became the principal model for Sargent's murals in the new wing of the Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, among the painter's most ambitious works. Sargent's nude studies and sketches from this project attest to a close collaboration between the two men that unfolded over nearly ten years. Featuring drawings given by Sargent to Isabella Stewart Gardner and published in full for the first time, a portrait of McKeller, and archival materials reconstructing his life and relationship with Sargent, this book opens new avenues into artist-model relationships and transforms our understanding of Sargent's iconic American paintings. Essays offer the first biography of Thomas McKeller and a window into African America life in early 20th century Roxbury. They address the artist's sexuality, his models, and consider questions of race and gender.

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection “[Lucey] delivers the goods, disclosing the unhappy or colorful lives that Sargent sometimes hinted at but didn’t spell out.”—Boston Globe In this seductive, multilayered biography, based on original letters and diaries, Donna M. Lucey illuminates four extraordinary women painted by the iconic high-society portraitist John Singer Sargent. With uncanny intuition, Sargent hinted at the mysteries and passions that unfolded in his subjects’ lives. These women inhabited a rarefied world of wealth and strict conventions—yet all of them did something unexpected, something shocking, to upend society’s rules.

Documents the Gilded Age love story of an heiress who fought for women's rights and an architect, tracing their upbringings, their pursuits, and their advocacy efforts on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised.

As the museum's first artist-in-residence, Sargent fulfilled Gardner's hopes for a new kind of cultural institution in Boston, one that would inspire creativity, cultivate artistic talent, and bring joy to artists and amateurs alike. Sargent painted five portraits during his stay at the museum and John Templeman Coolidge, a friend of Gardner's, captured Sargent at work in the Gothic Room in seven candid photographs. Cigarette in mouth, brush in hand, and a smile on his face, Sargent is seen painting Gretchen Osgood Warren and her daughter who are posing and laughing. This vibrant double portrait stands as a testament to Sargent's absorption of the museum's inspirational qualities and his sensitivity to his subject.

Artists’ oil paints have become increasingly complex and diverse in the 20th Century, applied by artists in a variety of ways. This has led to a number of issues that pose increasing difficulties to conservators and collection keepers. A deeper knowledge of the artists’ intent as well as processes associated with material changes in paintings is important to conservation, which is almost always a compromise between material preservation and aesthetics. This volume represents 46 peer-reviewed papers presented at the Conference of Modern Oil Paints held in Amsterdam in 2018. The book contains a compilation of articles on oil paints and paintings in the 20th Century, partly presenting the outcome of the European JPI project ‘Cleaning of Modern Oil Paints’. It is also a follow-up on ‘Issues in Contemporary Oil Paint’ (Springer, 2014). The chapters cover a range of themes and topics such as: patents and paint manufacturing in the 20th Century; characterization of modern-contemporary oil paints and paint surfaces; artists’ materials and techniques; the artists’ voice and influence on perception of curators, conservators and scientists; model studies on paint degradation and long term stability; approaches to conservation of oil paintings; practical surface treatment and display. The book will help conservators and curators recognise problems and interpret visual changes on paintings, which in turn give a more solid basis for decisions on the treatment of these paintings.

Edited by Jane Desmarais and David Weir.

Spanning the era from the end of Reconstruction (1877) to 1920, the entries of this reference were chosen with attention to the people, events, inventions, political developments, organizations, and other forces that led to significant changes in the U.S. in that era. Seventeen initial stand-alone essays describe as many themes.