John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was born in
Florence, Italy to an
American family in 1856. He moved to
Paris in 1874 to practice under the masterful portraitist
Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran. After his apprenticeship, he traveled to
Spain to study the works of the country’s great
painters, such as
Velasquez and
Goya. He returned to Paris and displayed his works at the prestigious
Salon. When he displayed his daring
portrait of
Madame Gautreau in 1884, many were outraged, so he moved his studio to
London, where he lived for thirty years. Here, he helped found the
New English Art Club, where he displayed his works. In 1874, Sargent traveled to
Giverny, France to paint with the famous
impressionist Claude Monet. He visited
America only a few times in his life.
Sargent’s
painting style was a mix of
traditional techniques with hints of
impressionistic, even
modern touches. Perhaps these hints were an influence of Sargent’s colleague,
Monet. Many
art historians point to Sargent’s
technique of painting women’s white dresses with broad, arbitrary
strokes of paint as the beginnings of
modern art. Sargent also experimented with creating stunning
depths with
light and
shadow in the style of
Velazquez and
Rembrandt.
Many praised Sargent as the most brilliant
portrait painter of his time. His works depicted the most
affluent,
wealthy,
glamorous and
distinguished members of society during the
Gilded Age, including many prominent Americans, such as the wealthy
oil entrepreneur John Rockefeller, and Presidents
Woodrow Wilson and
Theodore Roosevelt. His paintings depict the opulent
lifestyles of the rich and famous upper class in America.
Source: Picked up all of this in a standard art history survey class at a university.