John Singer Sargent artprints & posters

John Singer Sargent was born on January 12, 1856 in Florence (Italy). His parents were Americans but Sargent was born and raised in Italy, in the cradle of the Renaissance. There, he discovered the art of drawing and painting. He was soon accepted at the Florence Academy. Then, from 1874 to 1878, he worked in the studio of the portraitist Carolus-Duran. In 1884, he settled in London. Sargent soon made a name for himself in the world of English high society and then travelled throughout Europe, particularly to Spain, where Velasquez's brushwork soon influenced his style. He perfected the approach he has been taught at Carolus-Duran's studio. This technique required a great rigour in drawing and in the execution of the background as well as an alla prima work, directly on the canvas. The distribution of light and shadow is then simplified and structures the painting, which clearly differentiates his art from that of other artists such as Thomas Eakins and Julian Alden Weir. In Venice, Corfu, the Middle East and the United States, Sargent indulged in the creation of more than two thousand watercolours depicting fauna, flora and indigenous peoples. In those works, characters, natural elements and even architecture seems to move with fluidity. He was an excellent portraitist, he is now remembered as "the incomparable witness to male power and female beauty in an age, our own, which pays an excessive price to both". John Singer Sargent died on April 14, 1925 in London, (England).