Exhibitions: John Singer Sargent Watercolors @ The Brooklyn Museum, NY.

Another show I'm really excited about, for those of you in NYC or willing to go there: The Brooklyn Museum is having a showing of Sargent's Watercolors, most not shown to the public in decades. It runs April 5–July 28, 2013. If you miss it there, you'll get another shot at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, October 13, 2013- January 20, 2014.

I'm a huge fan of Sargent's oil paintings, with their calligraphic brush strokes and rich color. His watercolors are equally masterful, and show a more immediate, personal side to his work. They feature quick sketches from his many travels, intimate views of his friends and family through the years and some truly incredible renderings of architectural masterpieces. The light and delicacy he captures in these works is hard to reproduce and should be experienced in person, and since these are mostly done on paper, worth seeing before they are lost to the ravages of time. 

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The Cashmere Shawl, circa 1911.

From their website: 

"This landmark exhibition unites for the first time the John Singer Sargent watercolors acquired by the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in the early twentieth century. The culmination of a yearlong collaborative study by both museums, John Singer Sargent Watercolors explores the watercolor practice that has traditionally been viewed as a tangential facet of Sargent’s art making. The ninety-three pieces on display provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to view a broad range of the artist’s finest production in the medium.

Brooklyn’s thirty-eight watercolors, most of which have not been on view for decades, were largely purchased from Sargent’s 1909 debut exhibition in New York. Their subjects include Venetian scenes (The Bridge of Sighs), Mediterranean sailing vessels, intimate portraits (A Tramp), and Bedouin subjects (Bedouins). Boston’s watercolors, purchased in 1912, are more highly finished than the Brooklyn works. They feature subjects from his travels to the Italian Alps, the villa gardens near Lucca, and the marble quarries of Carrara, as well as portraits. The exhibition also presents nine oil paintings, including Brooklyn’s An Out-of-Doors Study, Paul Helleu and His Wife (1889) and Boston’sThe Master and His Pupils (1914).

New discoveries based on scientific study of Sargent’s pigments, drawing techniques, and paper preparation are featured in a special section deconstructing his techniques. Select works throughout the exhibition are paired with videos that show a contemporary watercolor artist demonstrating some of Sargent’s methods."

 Santa Maria della Salute, 1904