Artist: John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)
Title: En route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish) Fishing for Oysters at Cancale
Date: 1878
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: height: 77 cm (30.3 in); width: 121.6 cm (47.8 in)
Inscription: Signed and Dated: John S. Sargent Paris 1878
Collection: National Gallery of Art
What I love about this picture:
This is a perfect summer day, a good day to be out near the water. John Singer Sargent was a complicated man, as most artists are. Famous as a portrait artist, he painted landscapes that conveyed a sense of mood and emotion that few of his contemporaries could match. One of Sargent’s great skills was the ability to convey the sensory impressions of an environment.
He found beauty and drama in the lives of ordinary people and showed his characters outdoors in all the seasons. His paintings of working-class people didn’t romanticize how they dressed, conveyed their moods. Sargent showed the environment they lived and worked in, no matter how good or bad the weather.
Sargent had a gift for painting rare and expensive fabrics, yet no one is dressed in finery in this painting. On the contrary, the women are dressed in shabby clothes that protect them from the sun and salty wind, garments that have seen a great deal of wear. The children are bare-legged and barefoot, while the fishers wear clogs. These women carry baskets and the hope that they will find enough oysters and other shellfish to not only feed their family but have plenty to sell to the fishmonger.
About this picture via MFA Boston: Sargent’s choice of subject was not revolutionary – a similar scene of oyster harvesters had previously won a medal at the Salon. However, his ability to paint the reflections in the tidal pools and the light sparkling on the figures and clouds dazzled viewers, clearly demonstrating that his talents extended beyond portraiture. [1]
About the artist, via Wikipedia:
John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation” for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, Spain, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.
Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe. He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter. An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his Portrait of Madame X, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris but instead resulted in scandal. During the year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England, where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist.
From the beginning, Sargent’s work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for its supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life, Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. Art historians generally ignored society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.
The exhibition in the 1980s of Sargent’s previously hidden male nudes served to spark a reevaluation of his life and work, and its psychological complexity. In addition to the beauty, sensation and innovation of his oeuvre, his same-sex interests, unconventional friendships with women and engagement with race, gender nonconformity and emerging globalism are now viewed as socially and aesthetically progressive and radical.
Credits and Attributions:
[1] Quote: MFABoston contributors, Fishing for Oysters at Cancale – Works – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (mfa.org) (accessed May 12, 2024).
[2] Wikipedia contributors, “John Singer Sargent,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Singer_Sargent&oldid=1223504088 (accessed May 12, 2024).
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