Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife
by Eric Glaser
Title
Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife
Artist
Eric Glaser
Medium
Painting - Oil On Canvas
Description
"Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife"
Artist: John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925)
"An Out-of-Doors Study"
Description:
English: Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife
Depicted people: Paul César Helleu and his wife Alice
Date: 1889
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Height: 65.9 cm (25.9 in); Width: 80.7 cm (31.7 in)
Collection: Brooklyn Museum, NY USA
Credit Line: Museum Collection Fund
Inscriptions: Signed lower right: "John S. Sargent"
In the late 1880s, the American expatriate John Singer Sargent experimented with portrait compositions whose informality and naturalness stood in sharp contrast to his commissioned studio portraits of elegant society types. Inspired in part by the Impressionist works of his friend Claude Monet, this portrait depicts another French artist friend, Paul Helleu, and his young wife, Alice, at Fladbury, in England’s Cotswolds. Liberated from pictorial conventions, Sargent here featured the compositional asymmetry, natural light, and casual inattention of his “sitters.”
John Singer Sargent was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.
Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe. He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter. An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his Portrait of Madame X, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris, but instead resulted in scandal. During the next year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist.
From the beginning, Sargent's work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality.
Text Credit: Brooklyn Museum and Google Arts & Culture
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
This is a Google Art Project image, thank you Google!
Additional image editing by Eric Glaser
Uploaded
September 28th, 2021
Embed
Share
Similar Images
Comments
There are no comments for Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife. Click here to post the first comment.
Recently Viewed
