Singer Sargent Watercolors: An Artist’s Perspective
by Barbara Ernst Prey
It is not too late to see John Singer Sargent Watercolors, the first expansive exhibition of Sargent’s watercolors in twenty years, organized by The Brooklyn Museum, together with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on view at the Brooklyn Museum through July 28. The exhibit unites for the first time the 93 watercolors of Sargent acquired by both museums. The exhibition travels to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, October 13 to January 20, 2014 and then to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Brooklyn’s Sargent watercolors were purchased en masse from the artist’s 1909 debut exhibition in New York. The watercolors purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1912, were painted by Sargent with his Boston audience in mind. They feature themes of travels to the Italian Alps, the villa gardens near Lucca, and the marble quarries of Carrara.
I have painted watercolors for over 40 years (one of my paintings, “Family Portrait” is in the collection of The Brooklyn Museum) and I had been eagerly awaiting this exhibit. As a member of the National Council on the Arts, the advisory board to The National Endowment for the Arts which supported the exhibit, I followed the project as it was in the works. I was also invited by The Corcoran Gallery of Art to lecture about Sargent during their recent ‘Sargent and the Sea’ exhibit.
As a watercolor painter I can imagine Sargent holding the brush to paint these paintings. His use of brushstroke, loose and free is extraordinary. Another artist might not be able to pull it off but Sargent makes it work. His oils, too, have this quality – a dash here, a couple of brushstrokes there, something only a master can execute. It is like jazz – you have to have the basics before you can improvise.
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