cover image Sargent at Bway

Sargent at Bway

Stanley Olson. Universe/Coe Kerr Gallery, $19.95 (118pp) ISBN 978-0-87663-492-9

John Singer Sargent was gaining financial success as a salon artist when he made a break to impressionism. The catalyst was several summers spent at an artist's colony in Broadway, a Cotswold Village, and in two nearby English towns. Painting outdoors, taking Broadway's luxuriant garden and romatic houses as one big pictorial prop, he developed a spontaneous, snapshot vision of nature. Three essays by Sargent scholars trace the course of his impressionist phase. Under Monet's spell, Sargent did oils from his own bateau-atelier or boat used as a studio. The Broadway years paved the way for his powerful portraits of the 1890s which synthesized impressionism and realism. One essay, an analysis of Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, which shows two young girls lighting Japanese lanterns in a garden, probes the picture's symbolic roots in medieval romance. The book is illustrated with 47 color plates, 74 halftones. (June)