Sargent and the Sea – at the Royal Academy of Arts

John Singer Sargent RA
En Route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish), 1878. Oil on canvas, 78.8 x 122.8 cm. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund 17.2

John Singer Sargent RA
Neapolitan Children Bathing, 1879. Oil on canvas, 16.8 x 41.1 cm. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
© Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Sargent and the Sea – at the Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts present an exhibition of works by John Singer Sargent RA (1856-1925). Sargent is, of course, best known as a portraitist. Less familiar is his passion for the sea and the remarkable range of maritime works that he produced in the early years of his career

10 July – 26 September 2010

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Source: Royal Academy of Arts
Over 80 paintings, drawings and watercolours produced during the young artist’s travelsfrom Paris to the Normandy and Brittany coasts, the Italian island of Capri, Morocco and tovarious Mediterranean ports will form the subject of this revelatory exhibition.

The exhibition will focus on the formative years of Sargent’s artistic career covering the period of1874-1880. During these years Sargent travelled extensively and the dramatic close-up views ofthe Atlantic Ocean painted from the deck during two transatlantic voyages reveal Sargent’sadmiration for Turner and Courbet and show flashes of the bravura painting that woulddistinguish his mature career. A little-known scrapbook reveals Sargent’s precocious talent as adraughtsman and shows how well he understood the mechanism of boats.

Sargent and the Sea will feature Setting Out to Fish, a major exhibition piece which wasdisplayed at the Paris Salon in 1878. For this imposing painting of fisher folk in the Breton fishingport of Cancale, Sargent made a number of striking plein-air oil studies which will be presentedwith the painting. The following year Sargent was captivated by the blue sea of Capri wherechildren playing on the beach inspired some tender and evocative compositions. The busyMediterranean port scenes add another dimension to Sargent’s maritime oeuvre. Tocomplement the exhibition there will be a selection of the dazzling boating watercolours thatSargent painted in Venice in the early twentieth century.