John Singer Sargent Art Prints

John Singer Sargent (12 January 1856 – 14 April 1925) an American painter, was born in Italy but spent most of his adult life in London. During his career, 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. His work crossed the boundaries between Impressionism and Naturalism. He frequently mingled with the Impressionists, but was viewed by them with much skepticism. They admired his technical abilities but dismissed his seriousness as an Impressionist. Monet was the only artist of the group who befriended Sargent, acting as a mentor and confidant. Later in his career, Sargent created hundreds of scenic watercolors, moving away from portraiture. These later images are considered a welcome diversion from some of his more serious figurative works. While his work has fallen in and out of favour in the decades, his popularity has increased steadily since the 1950s. In the mid 1980s, critic Robert Hughes praised Sargent as "the unrivaled recorder of male power and female beauty in a day that, like ours, paid excessive court to both."