Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood

English

Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood: John Singer Sargent

Price: Price on Request
Art Type: Oil Painting
Size:
English Comments: 0
International Comments: 0
Creating Date:
Introduction and Works of John Singer Sargent >>

Contemporary-Art.org

Reproduction

Enlarge

John Singer Sargent Oil Painting - Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood

Keywords: Claude, Monet, Painting, Edge, Wood

Work Overview: Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood
?1885
ARTIST John Singer Sargent 1856–1925
MEDIUM Oil paint on canvas
DIMENSIONS Support: 540 x 648 mm
frame: 618 x 734 x 70 mm
COLLECTION Tate

Sargent first met Monet in 1876, but the two artists were closest ten years later. It was probably in 1885 that they painted together at Giverny, near Paris. Sargent admired the way that Monet worked out of doors, and imitated some of his subjects and methods in sketches such as this. It is characteristic of Sargent to give a human view of Monet's practice and of the patience of his wife, who sits behind him. When he settled in London in 1885 Sargent was initially viewed as avant-garde, but came to be the greatest society portraitist of his day.

In 1885-86, Sargent painted the works that marked his brief but intense Impressionist phase. However, it was not till he visited Monet at Giverny in 1887 that he embraced Impressionism more completely. His picture Claude Monet Painting at the Edge of a Wood records that visit. In this painting, the outlines have become blurred and the brushwork, rather than establishing a perspective three-dimensionality, embeds the figures in a dissolving fabric of colour tonalities.

Sargent usually presented the sketches he made of friends and fellow artists to them as gifts, as was the tradition in artistic circles. This sketch of Claude Monet (1840–1926) is an exception. It remained with Sargent all his life and was in his studio when he died, along with several works by Monet that Sargent collected.
Monet is shown sitting at an easel painting a landscape outdoors. This portrait has assumed an importance in the history of Impressionism because it shows the French artist doing what he advocated, painting directly from nature. It certainly had a personal significance for Sargent, who greatly admired Monet, as it commemorates their artistic relationship.

If not one of the Impressionists, Sargent was certainly an adherent of the movement. The derision aroused by his portrait of Madame Gautreau when exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1884 interrupted what might have been a close connection with French art and led him to make London his headquarters as a portrait painter. But he contributed to the establishment of an insular offshoot of Impressionism in the New English Art Club, of which he was one of the founder members in 1886, and sought to arouse interest in Monet's work for America. He had the greatest admiration for Monet and was influenced in his own style by the French master. At the time he painted this portrait he had recently bought one of Monet's paintings, Rock at Tréport.

The portrait was painted in the spring of 1888 at Giverny where Monet had gone to live not long before. The wife of his former patron, Mme Ernest Hoschedé, whom Monet had befriended and who was to become his second wife, appears at the right of the picture. Sargent had not attempted the translation of light and shade into terms of pure color in the essentially Impressionist fashion but indicates the splashes of sunlight through the trees with his own vivacity, and his capacity for the brilliant sketch is well exemplified in the figures.

Copyright Statement:
All the reproduction of any forms about this work unauthorized by Singing Palette including images, texts and so on will be deemed to be violating the Copyright Laws.
To cite this webpage, please link back here.

>> English Comments >> Chinese Comments >> French Comments >> German Comments >>Report

John Singer Sargent

Work Overview