John Singer Sargent

Erica E. Hirshler

Chronicles the lives of the participants involved in the creation of the famous painting before and after its first showing in Paris, along with a discussion of the painting's legacy on art over time.

The Biography of a Painting

Sargent's Daughters

Tate Britain (Gallery) Staff

Sargent and Fashion

Elsa Smithgall

John Davis

Katherine M. Bourguignon

Giovanna Ginex

A landmark retrospective that examines William Merritt Chase and his lasting contribution to the history of modern art The history of modern art owes a great debt to William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), one of America's influential artists and educators. Chase was a leading member of the international artistic avant-garde and was best known for his mastery of a wide range of subjects in oil and pastel, including figures, landscapes, urban park scenes, interiors, and portraits. As a teacher and founder of the Shinnecock Summer School of Art and the New York School of Art, Chase mentored a new generation of modernists, including Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Joseph Stella. A century after his death, the breadth and richness of Chase's career are celebrated in this beautifully illustrated publication. Five essays by prominent scholars of American art offer new insights into Chase's multi-faceted artistic practice and his position in the international cultural climate at the turn of the 20th century.

A Modern Master

William Merritt Chase

Dennis Miller Bunker

Dennis Miller Bunker (1861-1890) was one of the most talented painters of late nineteenth-century America. He was among the first Americans to use the bright colors and broken brushstrokes of the new Impressionist style; his beautiful landscapes and portraits are sought after by the most distinguished collectors of American art." "Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist is the first comprehensive study of this important American artist. Trained in the academies of his native New York, Bunker continued his education in Paris, where he flourished in the sophisticated atmosphere of the world's art capital. In 1885, he accepted a teaching position in Boston. He joined the city's vibrant artistic community and developed close friendships with the writer William Dean Howells, the composer Charles Martin Loeffler, and the legendary collector Isabella Stewart Gardner, who became his champion. In Boston, Bunker also met John Singer Sargent, America's most renowned painter. The summer they spent working together in England proved to be a turning point in Bunker's career." "Bunker moved to New York in 1889. His heart remained in Boston, however, for he had fallen in love with Eleanor Hardy, the daughter of a prominent businessman. The couple married in October 1890. Barely three months later, Bunker died at age twenty-nine of a sudden illness. His beautifully crafted paintings were his only legacy.

American Impressionist

Teresa A. Carbone

Annette Manick

Antoinette Owen

Karen A. Sherry

John Singer Sargents approach to watercolour was unconventional. Disregarding late-nineteenth-century aesthetic standards that called for carefully delineated and composed landscapes filled with transparent washes, his confidently bold, dense strokes and loosely defined forms startled critics and fellow practitioners alike. One reviewer in England, where Sargent spent much of his adult life, called his work swagger watercolours. For Sargent, however, the watercolours were not so much about swagger as about a new way of thinking. In watercolour as opposed to oils his vision became more personal and his works more interconnected. Presenting nearly 100 works of art, this book is the first major publication of Sargents watercolours in twenty years. Each chapter highlights a different subject or theme that attracted the artists attention during his travels through Europe and the Middle East: sunlight on stone, figures reclining on grass, patterns of light and shadow. Insightful essays by the worlds leading experts enhance this book and introduce readers to the full sweep of Sargents accomplishments in the medium, in works that delight the eye as well as challenge our understanding of this prodigiously gifted artist.

John Singer Sargent Watercolors

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.

Thomas Mckeller and John Singer Sargent

Boston's Apollo

A paperback edition of the book described by the New York Times Book Review as 'thoroughly absorbing'. Henry James minced no words in crediting John Singer Sargent with a 'knock-down insolence of talent.' Among the painter's many renowned works, few deserve the phrase as much as The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, which stands alongside Madame X and Lady Agnew of Lochnaw as one of Sargent's greatest images. The painting, depicting four young sisters in the family apartment (first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1883, it predated by just one year the scandal of Madame X), both explores and defies convention, crossing the boundaries between portrait and genre scene, formal composition and casual snapshot. At its unveiling, one prominent critic rushed to praise Sargent's stunning originality, while another dismissed the canvas as 'four corners and a void.' Using numerous unpublished archival documents, Erica E. Hirshler explores this iconic canvas from a variety of angles, discussing its innovative significance as a work of art, the people involved in its making and what became of them, its importance to Sargent's career, its place in the tradition of artistic patronage, and its changing meanings and lasting popularity. Sargent's Daughters is an evocative, multifaceted book that will transform the way you look at Sargent's work, simultaneously illuminating a much beloved painting and reaffirming its mystery

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

Helene Barbara Weinberg

National Gallery (Great Britain)

David Park Curry

Christopher Riopelle

Kathleen Adler

John White Alexander, Cecilia Beaux, James Carroll Beckwich, Frank Weston Benson, Nelson Norris Bickford, John Leslie Breck, Dennis Miller Bunker, Mary Stevenson Cassatt, Jefferson David Chalfant, William Merritt Chase, Charles Courtney Curran, Thomas Eakins, Mary Fairchild, Elizabeth Jane Gardner, Abbott Fuller Graves, Ellen Day Hale, Frederick Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Thomas Hovenden, William Morris Hunt, Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Hermann Dudley Murphy, Elizabeth Nourse, Charles Sprague Pearce, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, John Singer Sargent, Julius LeBlanc Stewart, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Edmund Charles Tarbell, John Henry Twachtman, Harry van der Weyden, Frederic Porter Vinton, Robert Vonnoh, Julian Alden Weir, James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

Americans in Paris, 1860-1900

Erica E. Hirshler

Books

Your next favorite book is out there