Late Figure Studies and Landscapes
After he gave up formal portraiture, Sargent returned to outdoor painting in
a series of landscapes with figures celebrating the pleasures of resting
in the sun, reading, dreaming, playing chess, or sketching. At once realistic
and highly contrived, these images of sensuous abandon are varied and
innovative in their composition. Sargent painted his friends and relatives
from unusual perspectives, close up or from above -- viewpoints that flatten
the space and foreshorten the bodies. Two Girls in White Dresses ,
painted during an excursion in the Italian Alps, shows the same model
twice in a sweeping zigzag composition that gives the painting a dynamism
at odds with the passivity of the women. The lush handling of paint creates
rhythms in the ample folds of the satin dress, animating the surface of
the canvas and adding to the decorative effect.
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Portrait Painter | Watercolors | Late Studies | Brochure Images