Lot Essay
Executed in 1917, while John Singer Sargent was visiting Florida to paint a portrait of John D. Rockefeller, Palm Thicket, Vizcaya is a brilliant expression of form, color and light. "Sargent . . . plunges," writes Donelson Hoopes, "into these Florida subjects with the abandon of one who had no difficulty indulging himself in such pleasures. . . Recalling those vanished summers in the Mediterranean sun, Sargent said of Vizcaya, 'It combines Venice and Frascati and Aranjuez and all that one is likely to see again.' This was Sargent's last look at paradise before returning to Europe and the war." (Sargent Watercolors, New York, 1970, p. 80) Villa Vizcaya, the ornate Italian Renaissance estate built by the industrialist brother of his friend Charles Deering, is today a museum open to the public. Sargent--inspired by a combination of the tropical light and fantastic architectural views of the villa--produced numerous works during his stay there, among them a series of studies of palm fronds. In works such as Palm Thicket, Vizcaya, light and color merge, and the sheet shimmers with a brilliant display of surface pattern.
Sargent was enchanted with the exoticism of Florida, and despite the interruptions in Europe caused by World War I, he enjoyed his visit and concentrated on painting. He wrote, "I am fiddling and doing watercolors while Rome is burning and easing my conscience by doing a portrait of Rockefeller for the Red Cross." Donelson Hoopes comments, "But this did not deter Sargent from painting exotic sights with obvious relish: alligators basking in the sun, and the splendors of Vizcaya, with all of its baroque architectural improbabilities. The watercolors glow and live with a power that perhaps even Sargent did not suspect of himself. He seems to have poured the full force of his resources of observation into these paintings, capturing at once the complex symmetry of his subject, and the very mood of the tropics." (Sargent Watercolors, p. 80)
Five related watercolors of palms are documented, two of which--Landscape with Palms and Palmettos--were given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1950 by Sargent's sister, Violet Ormond.
This work will be included in the forthcoming John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonné by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, in collaboration with Warren Adelson and Elizabeth Oustinoff.
Sargent was enchanted with the exoticism of Florida, and despite the interruptions in Europe caused by World War I, he enjoyed his visit and concentrated on painting. He wrote, "I am fiddling and doing watercolors while Rome is burning and easing my conscience by doing a portrait of Rockefeller for the Red Cross." Donelson Hoopes comments, "But this did not deter Sargent from painting exotic sights with obvious relish: alligators basking in the sun, and the splendors of Vizcaya, with all of its baroque architectural improbabilities. The watercolors glow and live with a power that perhaps even Sargent did not suspect of himself. He seems to have poured the full force of his resources of observation into these paintings, capturing at once the complex symmetry of his subject, and the very mood of the tropics." (Sargent Watercolors, p. 80)
Five related watercolors of palms are documented, two of which--Landscape with Palms and Palmettos--were given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1950 by Sargent's sister, Violet Ormond.
This work will be included in the forthcoming John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonné by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, in collaboration with Warren Adelson and Elizabeth Oustinoff.