Sargent - by Richard Ormond (Hardcover)

About the Book

Originally published in Great Britain in 2015 by National Portrait Gallery Publications, London.

Book Synopsis

WINNER of the W. E. Fischelis Award from the Victorian Society in America.

Accompanying a major exhibition, this is the first book devoted to the career of this renowned American painter through his brilliant portraits. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was one of the leading painters of his generation, whose captivating portraits are universally admired for their insight into character, radiance of light and color, and painterly fluency and immediacy. This unprecedented book showcases Sargent's cosmopolitan career in a new light--through his bold portraits of artists, writers, actors, and musicians, many of them his close friends--giving us a picture of the artist as an intellectual and connoisseur of the music, art, and literature of his day. Whether depicted in well-appointed interiors or en plein air, the cast of characters includes many famous subjects, among them Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, Gabriel Fauré, Vaslav Nijinsky, W. B. Yeats, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Henry James. Structured thematically and according to the places Sargent worked and lived--Paris, London, New York, Italy, and the Alps--this book unites informative essays by noted scholars with a wealth of imagery to offer fresh insights into Sargent's life and work.

Review Quotes

"Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends unites informative essays by noted scholars with a wealth of imagery to offer fresh insights into Sargent's life and work. The book also includes drawings, early works, a richly illustrated chronology, and new research, making it one of the most comprehensive volumes on this renowned American painter." -Artdaily.org

"Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends, written by Richard Ormond, one of the foremost authorities on the artist, showcases Sargent's cosmopolitan career in a new light--through his bold portraits of artists, writers, actors, and musicians, many of them his close friends--giving us a picture of the artist as an intellectual and connoisseur of the music, art, and literature of his day. . . . Accompanying [major exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum of Art], this is the first book devoted to the entire career of this renowned American painter through these brilliant portraits." -ArtFixdaily.com

"Think Gilded Age, that glittering era of sophistication and new money at the end of the 19th century. John Singer Sargent painted and lived it. He cultivated commissions from its rich, and became famous for his luscious, flattering, society portraits, which is exactly what critics often held against him. And over time, the go-to portrait painter of his day lost interest in the grand paintings that made his name, preferring people in informal settings, and watercolors regarded as some of the finest ever painted. . . 90 years after his death, in 1925, it is those extraordinary, telling portraits that are treasured all over the world."
-CBS NEWS

About the Author

Richard Ormond is Samuel H. Kress Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and coauthor, with Elaine Kilmurray, of the Sargent catalogue raisonné. Trevor Fairbrother is an independent art curator. Barbara Dayer Gallati is curator emerita, American Art, Brooklyn Museum. Erica Hirshler is Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Marc Simpson is an independent art historian and curator. H. Barbara Weinberg is the former curator of American paintings and sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.