| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £8.20
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Watercolors of John Singer Sargent for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £8.20, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) stands among the greatest of watercolor painters, along with J.M.W. Turner, Winslow Homer, and other masters of this difficult medium. Watercolor was more than a distraction from the portrait and mural commissions Sargent labored over; after 1900, watercolor became central to his artistic vision. His aquarelles are, simply stated, masterworks. Portraits, interiors, landscapes, architectural studies--Sargent's work in watercolor offers a great variety of subject matter, ranging from Arab gypsies to World War I soldiers, to masterful depictions of Venetian churches, to Florida swamp alligators. Sargent carried his watercolors on his travels; They were ideally suited to capturing the scene, the light, the air, wherever he found himself. This book serves as a record of his travels, featuring the paintings he produced in Palestine, Northern Africa, the Canadian Rockies, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and Greece. Among specific locales were the islands of Majorca and Corfu; Florence, Venice, Carrara, Lake Garda, and Rome; the Alps; Lake O'Hara; the coast of Maine and the Miami River. Sargent's bold and often experimental use of the medium, which sometimes led to semi-abstract images, compels admiration among contemporary painters as well as museum goers today. In addition to placing Sargent's accomplishments in the context of his life and time, Carl Little discusses the artist's extraordinary watercolor technique.
About the Author
Carl Little is the author of Edward Hopper's New England (1993) and Winslow Homer: His Art, His Light, His Landscapes (1997). His essays and reviews appear in Art New England, Town & Country, and Art in America, where he was formerly associate editor. He has lectured at the Portland Museum of Art and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Maine.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In the UK, Sargent is chiefly known for his society portraits; only in the USA are his watercolours widely admired. His contemporary, Henry James, wrote "The naturalness of the compostion, the loveliness of complete effect, the light,free security of the execution, the sense it gives of assimilated secrets and of instinct and knowledge playing together - all this makes the picture . . . astonishing". One couldn't put it better; these are amongst the best paintings in the medium ever created.
A few faint strokes of pencil, visible through the brilliant washes, show how little Sargent relied on under-drawing and how much was done freehand with the brush. His sureness of touch, the freshness of the colour and the way loose broad strokes as if by magic convey a wealth of structure and detail show how totally he had mastered the medium. The subjects are wonderfully varied; landscapes, architectural subjects, groups of people, running water, all are conjured up out of wisps of pure colour. Everything sparkles, glows and flares with light.
The book starts with a brief professional biography, with an impressive follow-up of footnotes. Thereafter we are off into large pages of reproductions, set with quotes about the work from a variety of sources, and interspersed with paragraphs setting them in chronological context. A section of paintings date from Sargent's time as a war artist in Europe during the last part of the First World War. The book is indexed for the paintings and there are references for the quotations.
Anyone who paints in watercolour should own this book, although it may make them weep and grind their teeth at their own inadequacy. But it is utter joy even to a reader relatively uninterested in painting, for its sheer beauty.
A few faint strokes of pencil, visible through the brilliant washes, show how little Sargent relied on under-drawing and how much was done freehand with the brush. His sureness of touch, the freshness of the colour and the way loose broad strokes as if by magic convey a wealth of structure and detail show how totally he had mastered the medium. The subjects are wonderfully varied; landscapes, architectural subjects, groups of people, running water, all are conjured up out of wisps of pure colour. Everything sparkles, glows and flares with light.
The book starts with a brief professional biography, with an impressive follow-up of footnotes. Thereafter we are off into large pages of reproductions, set with quotes about the work from a variety of sources, and interspersed with paragraphs setting them in chronological context. A section of paintings date from Sargent's time as a war artist in Europe during the last part of the First World War. The book is indexed for the paintings and there are references for the quotations.
Anyone who paints in watercolour should own this book, although it may make them weep and grind their teeth at their own inadequacy. But it is utter joy even to a reader relatively uninterested in painting, for its sheer beauty.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book has fairly good reproductions of Sargent's watercolors. What I enjoy most is seeing many of his watercolors for the first time. My only complaint is that the book's smaller size limits how big the reproductions can be. Otherwise, this is a fantastic book.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a lovely book of watercolours by John Singer Sargent. He was a very successful artist in his day. What this book shows are his watercolours which are not so well known and were often done for his own satisfaction.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
