John Singer Sargent remains uncontested as the finest, flashiest portrait painter of his time. He was idolized during his career, and the purchase of his work by the National Gallery in London earned him the eulogy "the only living old master." Famous for his virtuoso brushwork and able to transform a daub of white coloring into a dazzling diamond ring, Sargent also displayed an amazing grasp of mental shade that turned his likenesses of the fashionable world into a complicated echo of his times.
His parents were American but he was born in Florence he was brought up and educated in Rome, Nice, and Germany. At age 18, he began his art study in Paris at Carolus-Duran’s studio and gained acknowledgment five years later when he displayed a portrait of his teacher in the Salon of 1879. Sargent made his first journey to Spain and Morocco in 1879, where he discovered the gloomy, unstable manner of Velazquez and Goya, which would radically influence his own style in the future.
He had settled permanently in London and had attained global success by the time Sargent made his first trip to America in 1887-88. In America, he was flooded with portrait commissions.
On a visit to New York in 1890, the painter and his sister, Violet, attended a party at the prominent Tenth Street studio of William Merritt Chase. Here he stumbled upon his friend, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who wanted to make a bas-relief of Violet's “beautiful Grecian profile.” Reciprocally, Sargent arranged to do a portrait of the sculptor's ten-year-old son Homer (1880-1958), which he implemented in his New York studio that year.
CREATOR John Singer Sargent
TITLE Portrait of a Boy
DATE 1890
MEDIUM oil on canvas
MEASUREMENTS H: 59 3/4 x W: 56 inches (H: 152 x W: 142 cm)
CREDIT Patrons Art Fund
ACCESSION NUMBER 32.1
LOCATION Gallery 5
