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Lot Essay
After the turn of the century, John Singer Sargent consciously turned his efforts to painting landscape, yet he still derived pleasure from painting portraits. "Every summer he would depart for the Continent, accompanied by his sister Emily, sketching companions like the de Glehns and the Stokeses, his other sister Violet and her children, and old family friends. He would first go to the Alps, to Purtud in the Val d'Aosta, or the Simplon Pass, to avoid the heat, descending into the plains of Italy or Spain in the autumn. He was often away for three or four months, sketching compulsively, and bringing back with him quantities of studies in oil and water-colour. He exhibited and sold a few, gave many away, but the residue were littered haphazardly around his studio, or stuffed into drawers." (J. Lomax and R. Ormond, John Singer Sargent and the Edwardian Age, London, England, 1979, p. 93) It was on one these trips during a summer in the early 1900s that Sargent traveled to Vigevano, where he painted this portrait of Ambrogio Raffele. Raffele, who is the subject of Sargent's famed An Artist in his Studio (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), was well known for the landscapes that he painted during the late nineteenth century.
Sargent produced a great deal of watercolor or charcoal sketches of friends. By virtue of its subject, this portrait of Raffele is related to portraits of other artists that Sargent executed throughout his career. "The theme of the fellow artist at work was intensified on these holidays. This interest dates back to the 1880s, when he painted three artists engaged in their own work: Ramon Subercaseaux in Venice, Monet in Giverny, and Helleu in Fladbury. In 1897 Sargent drew the young English artist William Rothenstein hard at work on a drawing. His many representations of other painters painting suggests that he favored like-minded individuals as traveling companions. An Artist in his Studio is especially amusing since it shows an artist giving finishing touches to a large landscape painting in his cramped hotel room." (T. Fairbrother, John Singer Sargent, New York, 1994, p. 103-5)
Watercolor as a medium proved to be a wonderful diversion for Sargent, and it enriched his entire artistic output. "In contrast to the formal portraits, Sargent's portrait sketches were painted with extreme rapidity it is likely that the majority of the sketches were the product of one or two sittings at most, and they retain the stamp of a single concentrated impression." (R. Ormond and E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, New Haven, Connecticut, 1998, p. xxiii) It seems fitting that Sargent would have chosen this spontaneous medium to portray other creative souls. "Very quickly, Sargent was applying a vigorous brush to paper with a brio that is unmatched. Watercolor seemed to release him from constraints about pictorial 'manners'; since most of this output was not intended for exhibitions, he may have had fewer reservations about 'letting go' than was possible with the things he put before the public or a client. Many of his best watercolors became gifts to friends and to members of his family - often inscribed with a brief dedication. Sargent looked modestly upon these efforts, and was amused when a collector insisted upon getting a title for the work." (D.F. Hoopes, Sargent Watercolors, New York, 1970, p. 19)
Although conceived and executed under dramatically different circumstances than his oil portraits of the late nineteenth century, Sargent's Portrait of Ambrogio Raffele exhibits the same genius that sustained Sargent's great reputation. In this work, as in the earlier oils, "while the settings he employed for his subjects were often conventional, the attitudes in which he caught his sitters were subtly insightful, telling much about their character, which could be discerned in the angle at which a head was turned, or the tension in the figure or gesture, and not by the facial expression alone." (Sargent Watercolors, p. 22)
This work will be included in the forthcoming John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonn by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, in collaboration with Warren Adelson and Elizabeth Oustinoff.
Sargent produced a great deal of watercolor or charcoal sketches of friends. By virtue of its subject, this portrait of Raffele is related to portraits of other artists that Sargent executed throughout his career. "The theme of the fellow artist at work was intensified on these holidays. This interest dates back to the 1880s, when he painted three artists engaged in their own work: Ramon Subercaseaux in Venice, Monet in Giverny, and Helleu in Fladbury. In 1897 Sargent drew the young English artist William Rothenstein hard at work on a drawing. His many representations of other painters painting suggests that he favored like-minded individuals as traveling companions. An Artist in his Studio is especially amusing since it shows an artist giving finishing touches to a large landscape painting in his cramped hotel room." (T. Fairbrother, John Singer Sargent, New York, 1994, p. 103-5)
Watercolor as a medium proved to be a wonderful diversion for Sargent, and it enriched his entire artistic output. "In contrast to the formal portraits, Sargent's portrait sketches were painted with extreme rapidity it is likely that the majority of the sketches were the product of one or two sittings at most, and they retain the stamp of a single concentrated impression." (R. Ormond and E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, New Haven, Connecticut, 1998, p. xxiii) It seems fitting that Sargent would have chosen this spontaneous medium to portray other creative souls. "Very quickly, Sargent was applying a vigorous brush to paper with a brio that is unmatched. Watercolor seemed to release him from constraints about pictorial 'manners'; since most of this output was not intended for exhibitions, he may have had fewer reservations about 'letting go' than was possible with the things he put before the public or a client. Many of his best watercolors became gifts to friends and to members of his family - often inscribed with a brief dedication. Sargent looked modestly upon these efforts, and was amused when a collector insisted upon getting a title for the work." (D.F. Hoopes, Sargent Watercolors, New York, 1970, p. 19)
Although conceived and executed under dramatically different circumstances than his oil portraits of the late nineteenth century, Sargent's Portrait of Ambrogio Raffele exhibits the same genius that sustained Sargent's great reputation. In this work, as in the earlier oils, "while the settings he employed for his subjects were often conventional, the attitudes in which he caught his sitters were subtly insightful, telling much about their character, which could be discerned in the angle at which a head was turned, or the tension in the figure or gesture, and not by the facial expression alone." (Sargent Watercolors, p. 22)
This work will be included in the forthcoming John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonn by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, in collaboration with Warren Adelson and Elizabeth Oustinoff.