"John Singer Sargent Beyond the Portrait Studio: Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Collection"
2000-06-06 until 2000-09-24
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, NY, USA

One of the most acclaimed American artists of his generation, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) achieved international recognition as a painter of society portraits by the mid-1880s. From the very start of his career, however, he also was attracted to subjects of everyday life. Despite the great demand on both sides of the Atlantic for Sargent's portraits, he declined most commissions after about 1905 and dedicated himself increasingly to travel—not only for its own sake, but in connection with important American mural commissions—and produced a great number of brilliant works. About 110 of Sargent's compelling oils, watercolors, and drawings—all from the extensive holdings of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many of them seldom seen by the public—are on view in John Singer Sargent Beyond the Portrait Studio: Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Collection.

These works illuminate episodes in Sargent's career, early to late, as he studied and sought inspiration outside the portrait studio. The exhibition has been organized to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of Sargent's death and the fiftieth anniversary of the gift of numerous works by his sister Mrs. Francis Ormond, and also to celebrate the publication of American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: John Singer Sargent. The Museum's spring Bulletin is also devoted to Sargent and the Metropolitan.

The exhibition and its accompanying publications are made possible by the Marguerite and Frank A. Cosgrove Jr. Fund.

IMAGE:
Young Woman in Black Skirt
1880-1882. John Singer Sargent
(1856-1925). Watercolor and
graphite on white wove paper. Gift
of Mrs. Francis Ormond, 1950

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