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Lot Essay
One of the most celebrated watercolor painters of his generation, John Singer Sargent painted with a dashing watercolor technique that emphasized his rich color and bravura brushwork. "There are few artists who have responded with greater visual excitement to the world of light and form," writes Donaldson Hoopes. "Sargent's watercolors obey the requirement of art in the most important way: they remain fresh forever, they endure." (Sargent Watercolors, New York, 1970, p. 20)
In Sargent's Base of a Palace, the artist paints a view of the wonderful buildings in Venice from a canal. He masterfully paints the perspective of the long, dark recession between the buildings. The work is freely sketched, as if the artist sought to capture a fleeting image of sunlight. He paints blues, purples, creams and a highlight of green with the broken brushwork characteristic of his best compositions.
Over the years, many critics have noted Sargent's seemingly effortless ability to paint in watercolor. The artist's friend and early biographer, Evan Charteris, remarked on the startling sense of spontaneity in these works: "They have a happy air of impromptu of the artist having come upon a scene at a particular moment and there and then translated it into paint. He set his face against anything like 'picture-making;' his watercolors are fragmentary -- pieces of the visible world broken off because they appealed to his eye. His power is displayed in the supremacy of his drawing, the opulence of his colour, the skill of his statement, finite as it often is, and the glowing warmth of his sunlit scenes. And in these he excels, not so much by the subtlety of his omissions as by the harmony of his assertions and his exuberant objectivity." (John Sargent, New York, 1927, p. 224)
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.
In Sargent's Base of a Palace, the artist paints a view of the wonderful buildings in Venice from a canal. He masterfully paints the perspective of the long, dark recession between the buildings. The work is freely sketched, as if the artist sought to capture a fleeting image of sunlight. He paints blues, purples, creams and a highlight of green with the broken brushwork characteristic of his best compositions.
Over the years, many critics have noted Sargent's seemingly effortless ability to paint in watercolor. The artist's friend and early biographer, Evan Charteris, remarked on the startling sense of spontaneity in these works: "They have a happy air of impromptu of the artist having come upon a scene at a particular moment and there and then translated it into paint. He set his face against anything like 'picture-making;' his watercolors are fragmentary -- pieces of the visible world broken off because they appealed to his eye. His power is displayed in the supremacy of his drawing, the opulence of his colour, the skill of his statement, finite as it often is, and the glowing warmth of his sunlit scenes. And in these he excels, not so much by the subtlety of his omissions as by the harmony of his assertions and his exuberant objectivity." (John Sargent, New York, 1927, p. 224)
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.