John Singer Sargent

(* 12th January, 1856 in Florence; † 15th April, 1925 in London) it counted as the most significant US-American portrait painter of his time.

Sargent, a distant cousin of the botanist Charles Sprague Sargent, was born as a son of US-American parents and spent his childhood primarily on travelling. When he was 13 years old, he became in Rome a pupil of the German American painter Carl Welsch. In 1871 he moved to Dresden and from there he travelled on to Venice.

His life was marked by extensive trips. On his landscapes there are found among other things scenes from Tyrol, Italy, Tangier, Algiers, Palestine, Egypt, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Scotland and Norway. He inserted figure studies in his sceneries what it especially characterises.

In Paris he took part in the autumn drawing room (Salon d'Automne) where his pictures Madame X and the daughters Boit originated (clearly under the influence Velázquez) which released at that time scandals. Sargent also taken part in the opposition against the conservative art appreciation of the royal Academy of Arts and founded in 1885 together with Thomas Cooper Gotch, Stanhope Forbes, Frank Bramley and other artists the New English Art Club. In 1886 he moved to London and took over the studio from James McNeill Whistler where he painted in 1890 La Carmencita and in 1897 Henry Marquand. Around the turn of the century he took part in the early exhibits of the Pastel Society.

He created full-size portraits of the American and English aristocracy in one of Whistler and the Spanish tone painting influenced impressionistic style. John Singer Sargent lies buried on the Brookwood Cemetery close Woking, Surrey.