![]() Fagan was a curator of prints and drawings at the British Museum. Sargent’s Portrait of Louis Alexander Fagan, 1893, is an interesting example of an entirely different type of portrait: an informal image of a personal friend. ![]() Many of his best works are in the grand manner – which, as Rodin observed, owes much to Van Dyck – showing the sitter in elegant dress in opulent surroundings. He had a natural talent for the society portraitist’s most valuable asset: the ability to create likenesses that were instantly recognizable and at the same time graceful and stylish. In the mid-1880s he moved his studio to London, where, if anything, he enjoyed even greater success. ![]() Sargent learned quickly, and became a successful portrait painter in Paris while still in his 20s. He also took time to travel to look carefully at the paintings of the old masters, developing a particular admiration for Velázquez, whose adroit brushwork and understated color harmonies became a lasting inspiration. Sargent enthusiastically embraced the expressive freedom of this approach. Rather than the lengthy process taught at the Royal Academy, which required making preliminary studies and laying down multiple layers of under-paint, he emphasized rapid execution directly on the canvas. Carolus-Duran’s instruction was almost the antithesis of contemporary academic training. His parents encouraged his interest in art, and as a young man he began to study in Paris with the portraitist Carolus-Duran. As a result, Sargent learned to speak four languages well and developed a charming social manner that made him welcome in drawing rooms everywhere. His family moved easily in a small but cosmopolitan circle of artists, musicians, and literati. Sargent was born in Florence in 1856 to American expatriate parents who led an itinerant, Bohemian life among the cultural centers of Europe. ![]() Upon seeing one of his portraits at an exhibition, Auguste Rodin called him “the Van Dyck of our time“ – an apt observation, since Van Dyck’s bravura paint-handling was undoubtedly one of the sources of Sargent’s technique. NEW YORK, NY - John Singer Sargent was a consummate virtuoso a more prodigiously gifted painter has seldom lived. ![]()
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