Late Figure Studies and Landscapes

The same model, Sargent’s niece, wearing a similar shawl, posed for the sumptuous indoor scene Nonchaloir (Repose) of 1911. The careful composition around a horizontal axis, the series of echoes -- between the table and the frame or the shawl and the sofa -- and the subdued palette of greens, golds, and grays, create an image of great refinement, if less experimental than the outdoor studies.

Within a few years, the leisurely mood of these pictures was destroyed with the outbreak of World War I. In 1918, Sargent was sent by the British government to the Western Front to make studies for a monumental painting commemorating the war. In a group of watercolors made on the spot, and in the final mural, Gassed, Sargent evoked the horrors of war with detachment and in an elegiac note in sharp contrast to the glamour and romanticism of his earlier work, demonstrating once again, a few years before his death, the versatility of his prodigious talent. (continue)

Brochure written by Isabelle Dervaux, department of exhibition programs
Produced by the editors office, National Gallery of Art

For more information, please see John Singer Sargent.

International Artist | Triumph and Scandal | Impressionism
Portrait Painter | Watercolors | Late Studies | Brochure Images