John Singer Sargent 1856-1925

The artist
Violet Ormond (the artist's sister)
Jean-Louis Ormond (her eldest son), Vevey, Switzerland, 1949
Coe Kerr Gallery, New York
American Private Collection, acquired from the above, 1988 (sold: Sotheby's, New York, December 3, 1997, lot, 11, illustrated in color)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

 

London, England, Royal Academy, Exhibition of Works by the Late John S. Sargent, R.A., 1926, no. 26, illustrated p. 100
New York, New York City Art Gallery, New York City Art Gallery Loan Exhibition, 1926, no. 2

Hon. Evan Charteris, John Sargent, New York, 1927, p. 291
Richard Ormond, John Singer Sargent: Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors, New York, 1970, pl. 114, p. 257, illustrated in color
Warren Adelson, et al, Sargent Abroad: Figures and Landscapes, New York, 1997, pl. 212, no. 221, illustrated in color

The Rialto, painted circa 1909, features the unusual angle Sargent chose for his depictions of the Rialto bridge, orienting the viewer’s perspective from below the Venetian landmark as if from a passing gondola, rather than from the more typical view from above preferred by most contemporary artists.  This particular composition is based on a photograph of Sargent’s sister Emily and her friend Eliza Wedgwood taken from the Fondamenta de Vin, an embankment on the southwestern side of the bridge (Collection of the Ormond Family).  In the foreground, there is a produce boat with a young Venetian boy reclining in the bow.  In 1884, Julia Cartwright wrote, “They were among the most picturesque crafts in Venice, these market boats, piled with grapes and pomegranates and vegetables…a curly-headed child lies asleep in the stern, his head resting on the big cabbage.  These boats are often to be seen on the outskirts of the city…but if you want to study them at leisure, you must go to the Rialto at evening…as one by one the fruit-laden rafts come in” (Julia Cartwright, “The Artist in Venice,” The Portfolio, 1884, p. 39, as quoted by Margaretta M. Lovell, Venice: The American View, 1860-1920, San Francisco, 1984, p. 120).

By 1900, Sargent’s travels and summer interludes had become increasingly important as a source of creative inspiration.  Preferring to paint the picturesque European scenery and his intimate group of friends and relatives to society portraiture with its sometime stifling parameters, he stopped accepting portrait commissions altogether by 1909.  Beginning in 1905, Sargent spent the autumn months traveling in Italy and Switzerland with his sisters, Emily Sargent and Violet Ormond, and the Ormond children.  The family was often joined by friends, including Wilfred and Jane de Glehn.  These vacations allowed Sargent to take a break from the portrait commissions which made up the majority of his work during the winter months and to paint more casual images of his family and friends relaxing in their sun-dappled surroundings.  As Evan Charteris writes, “To these tours through Europe in his chosen company he owed some of the happiest months of his life.  He was away from his portraits, which by 1909 has become wearisome to him.  As early as 1906 he had written to Lady Lewis: ‘I have now got a bomb-proof shelter into which I retire when I sniff the coming portrait or its trajectory.’  Abroad he could go where his eye led him, and chose his subject; life was plain sailing on a sea of summer.  He would breakfast at 7:30, and then sally out to sketch, working till the light failed.  His energy was inexhaustible.  The hours of sunshine were treasured like gold.  Sight-seeing was reserved for rainy days” (Sir Evan Edward Charteris, John Sargent, New York, 1927, pp. 172-73).

Sargent chose watercolor for many of these casual paintings, as it was more portable, allowing on-site sketching, and enabling him to capture the effects of light and water quickly and effectively.  Though many artists used watercolor as a preliminary method to work out details for larger oils, Sargent rarely translated his watercolor sketches into other media.  He considered these watercolors finished works in their own right.  One exception to this practice is The Rialto.  The present work is closely related to a watercolor (figure 1) of the same subject.  It is less-developed than the present oil painting in which Sargent shows only one gondolier emerging into the sun from beneath the shadow of the Rialto.  Sargent also painted another oil of this subject (figure 2).  These three paintings are the most closely related works in these two mediums known in Sargent’s oeuvre.

Sargent first painted Venice during the summer of 1880, taking a studio at the Palazzo Rezzonico and venturing out into the streets to paint.  At this time he focused on the life of workingclass Venetians, painting dark images of the back streets rather than the more picturesque scenes of the gondolas and landmarks which made Venice a popular tourist destination for Europeans and Americans.  When Sargent returned to Venice after 1900, he chose to paint some of the more frequented sites in the city and completed a number of views of the Rialto at this time.  Built in 1588, the bridge was designed by the architect Antonio da Ponte for a contest to replace the former wooden bridge.  It was the only bridge spanning the Grand Canal until 1854 and remains a popular tourist destination today.  The Rialto was often painted by artists who sought to capture the bustling activity of the surrounding shops and markets which flow onto and over the bridge.  As a center of Venetian life, the Rialto was an ideal site to capture the fusion of native Venetians and tourists on holiday in Venice. 

While The Rialto shows glimpses of the surrounding buildings, including the Fondaco dei Tedeschi to the left which was once covered with frescoes by Giorgione and Carpaccio, Sargent’s primary focus is the black underbelly of the bridge arching over the canal.  Erica Hirshler notes: “In The Rialto, Sargent combined views of the privileged lifestyle he had recorded in An Interior in Venice (1899, Royal Academy of Arts, London) with the sensuous images of working-class life he had created in the 1880s.  Yet his own delight likely was not the convenient mix of social classes, but the extraordinary juxtaposition of light and shadow, of movement and permanence, in this remarkable image” (Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., The Lure of Italy: American Artists and the Italian Experience 1760-1914, New York, 1992, p. 409).

Sargent visited Venice on at least nine occasions between 1895 and 1913, his fascination with the complexities of the city, its architecture and inhabitants never diminished.  Margaretta Lovell comments of the series of paintings from Sargent’s sojourns in Venice, that “…his haunting Venetian genre scenes and his startlingly sliced architectural views now rival his more celebrated portraits for importance in his oeuvre” (Venice: The American View 1880-1920, p. 95).

figure 2: Philadelphia Museum of Art: The George W. Elkins Collection, 1924