Sargent S Women Four Lives Behind The Canvas

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.

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.

The subject of John Singer Sargent's most famous painting was twenty-three-year-old New Orleans Creole Virginie Gautreau, who moved to Paris and quickly became the "it girl" of her day. A relative unknown at the time, Sargent won the commission to paint her; the two must have recognized in each other a like-minded hunger for fame. Unveiled at the 1884 Paris Salon, Gautreau's portrait generated the attention she craved-but it led to infamy rather than stardom. Sargent had painted one strap of Gautreau's dress dangling from her shoulder, suggesting either the prelude to or the aftermath of sex. Her reputation irreparably damaged, Gautreau retired from public life, destroying all the mirrors in her home. Drawing on documents from private collections and other previously unexamined materials, and featuring a cast of characters including Oscar Wilde and Richard Wagner, Strapless is a tale of art and celebrity, obsession and betrayal.

"Portraits of an Artist: A Novel about John Singer Sargent is a work of historical fiction based on the life of a brilliant yet troubled artist of the late nineteenth century. A contemporary and associate of famous celebrities such as Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Edward Burne-Jones and Sarah Bernhardt, Sargent's meteoric rise to fame followed by his striking fall from grace, and his retreat to London from Paris, are the tragic underpinnings of his unforgettable career. The stories behind two of his finest paintings, "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" and "Madame X", are also explored in context. Told in first-person perspective from the points of view of numerous individuals who figured prominently in Sargent's life, "Portraits of an Artist" is an unforgettable reconstruction of a talented man's search to find meaning in life through art. Highly recommended." -- The Fiction Shelf of the Midwest Book Review "An evocative rendering of the great portraitist, John Singer Sargent, as seen through the eyes of the subjects of his most famous paintings. A tour de force of historical and psychological imagination." --Paula Marantz Cohen, author of What Alice Knew, Jane Austen in Scarsdale "Burns skillfully brings the subjects of his portraits to life, telling their stories in their own voices as the mystery of who Sargent really is, and the culture that both supported and constrained him, is gradually and artfully revealed." -- Laurel Corona, author of Finding Emilie, Penelope's Daughter, The Four Seasons

A wildly entertaining and surprisingly educational dive into art history as you've never seen it before, from the host of the beloved ArtCurious podcast We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know that Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed--or even murdered. Or how about the fact that one of Andy Warhol's most enduring legacies involves Caroline Kennedy's moldy birthday cake and a collection of toenail clippings? ArtCurious is a colorful look at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world's great artists and masterpieces. Through these and other incredible, weird, and wonderful tales, ArtCurious presents an engaging look at why art history is, and continues to be, a riveting and relevant world to explore.

Many of the sitters in this collection were John Singer Sargents close friends. They are posed informally, sometimes in the act of painting or singing, and it is evident from the bold way they confront us that they are personalities of a creative stamp. Brilliant as these pictures are as works of art and penetrating studies of character, they are also records of relationships, allegiances, influences and aspirations. This volume, and the exhibition it accompanies, aims to explore these friendships in depth and draw out their significance in the story of Sargents life and the development of his art. The book is structured chronologically, with sections arranged according to the places Sargent worked and formed relationships during his cosmopolitan career: Paris, London, New York, Italy and the Alps. The cast of characters includes famous names, among them Gabriel Fauré and Auguste Rodin, Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. But the authors also make their point with images of Sargents familiars, such as the artists Jane and Wilfrid de Glehn who accompanied him on his sketching expeditions to the Continent, and the Italian painter Ambrogio Raffele, a recurrent model in his Alpine studies. In such paintings Sargent explored the making of art (his own included) and the relationship of the artist to the natural world. These are examples of an absorbing range of images and personalities, all distinguished in one way or another for their artistry, and all linked by friendship and a shared aesthetic to the central figure of Sargent himself.

A Companion to Impressionism Presenting an expansive view of the study of Impressionism, this pioneering volume breaks new thematic ground while also reconsidering questions concerning the defini­tion, chronology, and membership of the impressionist movement. In 34 original essays from established and emerging scholars, this collection offers a diverse range of developing topics and new critical approaches to the interpretation of impressionist art. Focusing on the 1860s to 1890s, A Companion to Impressionism explores artists who are well-represented in impressionist studies, including Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Cassatt, as well as Morisot, Caillebotte, Bazille, and other significant yet lesser-known artists. The essays cover a wide variety of methodologies in addressing such topics as Impressionism’s global predominance at the turn of the 20th century, the relationship between Impressionism and the emergence of new media, the materials and techniques of the Impressionists, as well as the movement’s exhibition and reception history. This innovative volume also includes new discussions of modern identity in Impressionism in the contexts of race, nationality, gender, and sexuality and through its explorations of the international reach and influence of Impressionism. Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series, this important addition to scholarship in this field stands as the 21st century’s first major and large-scale academic reassessment of Impressionism. Featuring essays by academics, curators, and conservators from around the world, including those from France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Turkey, and Argentina, this is an invaluable text for students and scholars studying Impressionism and late 19th-century European art, Post-Impressionism, modern art, and modern French cultural history.

This sensitive and compelling biography sheds new light on John Singer Sargent’s art through an intimate history of his family. Karen Corsano and Daniel Williman focus especially on his niece and muse, Rose-Marie Ormond, telling her story for the first time. In a score of paintings created between 1906 and 1912, John Singer Sargent documented the idyllic teenage summers of Rose-Marie and his own deepening affection for her serene beauty and good-hearted, candid charm. Rose-Marie married Robert, the only son of André Michel, the foremost art historian of his day, who had known Sargent and reviewed his paintings in the Paris Salons of the 1880s. Robert was a promising historian as well, until the Great War claimed him first as an infantry sergeant, then a victim, in 1914. His widow Rose-Marie served as a nurse in a rehabilitation hospital for blinded French soldiers until she too was killed, crushed under a bombed church vault, in 1918. Sargent expressed his grief, as he expressed all his emotions, on canvas: He painted ruined French churches and, in Gassed, blinded soldiers; he made his last murals for the Boston Public Library a cryptic memorial to Rose-Marie and her beloved Robert. Braiding together the lives and families of Rose-Marie, Robert, and John Sargent, the book spans their many worlds—Paris, the Alps, London, the Soissons front, and Boston. Drawing on a rich trove of letters, diaries, and journals, this beautifully illustrated history brings Sargent and his times to vivid life.