A revealing, interdisciplinary exploration of the brilliant visual quotations in the work of the celebrated grand-manner portraitist The work of portraitist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) has come to epitomize the glamour and anxiety of his age. In this innovative study, Bruce Redford reveals the web of visual quotations and references that informed Sargent's most ambitious paintings. Throughout his career, Sargent was recognized and rewarded as a "Young Master" whose bravura portraits inspired comparison with the likes of Vel zquez, Van Dyck, and Reynolds. At the same time, his paintings responded to the stylistic experiments and cultural preoccupations of a world on the cusp of modernity. Sargent achieved this complex synthesis through a pictorial language composed of witty acts of allusion. John Singer Sargent and the Art of Allusion offers the first sustained inquiry into the painter's practice of quotation--one that created a complex visual code. Through comparative analysis among thematic groupings of portraits and analogous literary texts, Redford shows how Sargent devised and transmitted that code. The result is an enhanced awareness of Sargent's daring gamesmanship, his place in the history of portraiture, and the dynamics of allusion in both art and literature.

Le revers de la jaquette indique : "With the rise of museums in the 19th century, including the formation in 1824 of the National gallery in London, the art of the past became visible and accessible (in Victorian England) as never before. Inspired by the work of Sandro Botticelli, Jan van Eyck, Diego Velazquez, and others, British artists transformed contemporary art through a creative process that emphasized imitation and emulation. Elizabeth Prettejohn analyzes the ways in which the Old Masters were interpreted by artists, as well as critics, curators, and scholars, and argues that Victorian artists were, paradoxically, at their most original when they imitated the Old Masters most faithfully. Covering Victorian art from the Pre-Raphaelites through to the early modernists, she vividly traces the ways in wich artist such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Orpen engaged with the art of the past to produce some of the greatest art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

This volume defines allusion then identifies the 23 likely allusions in the Elihu speeches (Job 32–37) to Job 1–31. The allusiveness of the unit is a compositional feature that explains the varied evaluations of Elihu throughout interpretive history.

"An examination of how the work of the American painter John Singer Sargent was displayed, collected, and influential in the civic and cultural development of Chicago, Illinois during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries"--

"The book places this painting in the historical context of Khnopff's times and social milieu and traces the advent of Symbolism as a literary and artistic movement. An analysis of the portrait itself is supported by an array of related paintings, details, and technical photographs. Finally, the author uses Khnopff's portraits as a taking-off point for a broader discussion of Symbolist art."--BOOK JACKET.

Ships and the sea through the eyes of one of the most remarkable painters of the early 20th century As a young man the American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was passionate about the sea and deeply knowledgeable about ships and seafaring. Between the ages of 18 and 23 he started his career as a professional painter with a remarkable range of maritime works that form the subject of this exhibition and book. The key works are the two versions of the Oyster Gatherers of Cancale, painted in 1878 on the northern coast of Brittany in France, and the group of studies and sketches around them. The authors relate Sargent's freely handled marine drawings, large and small, to his watercolors, oil sketches, and finished oil paintings of marine subjects. The works demonstrate his transition from a plein-air painter to a tonalist exploring interiors and urban scenes. Also presented is a unique scrapbook, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that includes more than 50 drawings and sketches, mostly of sea scenes, and postcards and commercial photography of works of art, architecture, and tourist views. This scrapbook provides an intimate glimpse at the thoughts and experiences of the young artist on his first European voyage. Exhibition Schedule: Corcoran Gallery, Washington (9/12/09 - 1/3/10) The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2/14/10 - 5/23/10) Royal Academy of Arts, London (7/10/10 - 9/23/10)