Sargent and Italy

Bruce Robertson is professor of the history of art and architecture at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He is a specialist in American art from 1700 to 1945 and has published books on Winslow Homer and Marsden Hartley.

Sargent became one of the most international American artists of his day, shuttling around Italy, France, England, and the United States, but he knew Italy most intimately... [He] hated the dull routine of society portraiture, and his Italian trips--painting peasants in Capri, Venetian bead stringers, Alpine brooks--refreshed him. -- Katherine Zoepf, New York Times Book Review [Sargent's] synthesis of the classic and the contemporary plays with light and shadow to create a shimmering sensuality... [He] seemed to revel in the freedom which watercolors provide, and it is tempting to see these later Italian works as a release of sorts from the murals and high-toned portraits... [T]hese paintings, of gardens, quarries, cypresses, and of his family and friends on holiday, convey a powerful sense of that liberation. -- Michael Carlson, Times Literary Supplement Extremely well written and filled with magnificent reproductions, this beautiful volume offers the first in-depth and original study of this great artist in many years. -- Booklist Beautiful and informative... Italy was extremely influential on Sargent's work, which makes this a significant addition to book son Sargent. -- Library Journal With each new book on the ever-popular John Singer Sargent, readers learn more about the substantive complexities of an artist too often dismissed as simply a fashionable portraitist. The attraction of this appealing book ... is the opportunity it affords for scholarly focus on a key aspect of Sargent's career. -- Choice Sargent and Italy, a lavishly illustrated volume ... reminds us that Italy is both a place and an idea... The idea of Italy--a metaphor for excess, romance and seduction--has ... been ... important to artists, among them John Singer Sargent... Sargent and Italy insists, convincingly, that Sargent's vision of Italy was ultimately his own. -- Christopher Capozzola, The Art Book