Warren Adelson

With impressive new scholarship and little-known, color-drenched images, this beautiful book reveals an unexpected and highly engaging aspect of John Singer Sargent's remarkable career. Although most renowned for his dazzling society portraits, Sargent took greatest pleasure in escaping his studio to paint out of doors. In the past, his far-flung expeditions have been dismissed as little more than tourist jaunts. But with this book - the first significant study of the figures and landscapes that Sargent painted from 1900 (after he had established himself as one of the foremost portraitists of the age) through 1914 (when World War I changed his world) - it becomes clear that his travel paintings constitute a far larger and more important aspect of his work than previously realized. Many of these oils and watercolors come from private collections and have rarely, if ever, been seen in the years since the artist's death in 1925. For the first time, Sargent's extensive travels are thoroughly documented here, using letters and diaries written by his companions. Charming vintage photographs, including some that Sargent is believed to have taken himself, chronicle his adventures and cast new light on this intensely private artist. The book also includes as invaluable chronology of the artist's travels as well as brief biographies of his traveling companions - mostly beloved family and dear friends - who accompanied Sargent on his creative journeys.

"This volume celebrates Hassam's imposing career as one of America's foremost Impressionists. Unsurpassed in the quality and variety of his work, and equally talented in creating oil paintings, watercolors, and prints, Hassam explored such evocative subjects as rain-swept city scenes, glorious seaside gardens, exquisite women, and stirring flag-lined streets. Many of these irresistible pictures are hidden in private collections and have rarely, if ever, been reproduced; others are on view at major museums across the country, from the Metropolitan Museum to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art."--BOOK JACKET. "By approaching Hassam from several angles, the three authors reveal the many different facets of this multitalented artist and uncover previously unknown aspects of his life and work."--BOOK JACKET.

John Singer Sargent returned to Venice many times during his life, endlessly fascinated with this enchanting city. In paintings filled with vivid colors and dazzling light, he sought to capture its vitality and unique ambience, often working while afloat in a gondola. This gorgeously illustrated book presents nearly seventy of Sargent’s oil and watercolor paintings of Venice, many of them famous but others only rarely seen. The book also contains fascinating new photographs of actual sites depicted in Sargent’s paintings. Sargent’s early works in Venice were created in 1880-1882, and he undertook a second, larger body of work in the city during visits from 1900 to 1913. His responses to Venice - its local figures, its buildings and waterways, its extraordinary light - reflect his changing interests over time as well as his lifelong ability to extend his own reach as a creative artist. The book considers various aspects of Sargent’s work and milieu in a series of informative essays by international scholars. They discuss the evolution of Sargent’s style, the topography of his work in Venice, his connections with Henry James and other Americans in Venice, Italian artists in Venice in the nineteenth century, and American artists in Venice in the nineteenth century.