And today's excuse is that John Singer Sargent was born on this day in 1856. So here's one one of his Venetian watercolours, painted from a gondola on the Grand Canal - a watercolour of water and light on water and water light on stone. As Evan Charteris, a Sargent biographer, wrote: 'To live with Sargent's water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held, with the lustre of a bright and legible world, "the refluent shade" and "the ambient ardours of the noon".'
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Any Excuse for a Venetian Picture
And today's excuse is that John Singer Sargent was born on this day in 1856. So here's one one of his Venetian watercolours, painted from a gondola on the Grand Canal - a watercolour of water and light on water and water light on stone. As Evan Charteris, a Sargent biographer, wrote: 'To live with Sargent's water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held, with the lustre of a bright and legible world, "the refluent shade" and "the ambient ardours of the noon".'
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Lovely. I saw another of his watercolours over the weekend in a local museum, just a stone staircase in Italy. I thought the subject was rather plain until I really looked. The picture was glowing and shimmering with light.
ReplyDeleteHe is amazing - still underrated I reckon...
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ReplyDeleteI love Sargent. The portrait of Edith Minturn Stokes, with her young husband lurking in the background, is one of my favorites.I'm glad you think he's underrated, too, and I've never been able to figure out why.
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