John Singer Sargent 1856-1925

Mrs. W. Shakespeare
Sale: Christie's, London, June 24, 1927, lot 78
Private Collection (probably acquired at the above sale)
By descent in the family to the present owner

Very good condition; very fresh, affixed to the mat along edges, otherwise fine.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In 1854 Dr. Fitzwilliam Sargent and his wife Mary Newbold Singer Sargent left Philadelphia on a Grand Tour of Europe that would last the rest of their lives, the couple moving as perpetual tourists from country to country. John, their eldest surviving child, was born in Florence in 1856 and despite his peripatetic upbringing and scant formal education, proved to be a gifted draftsman. Regardless of circumstance or location, his mother mandated that each day her young son add at least one finished drawing to his ever-growing sketchbook. His artistic flair impressed his family and in 1870, Fitzwilliam wrote to John's grandmother: "My boy John seems to have a strong desire to be an Artist by profession, a painter, and he shows so much evidence of talent in the direction and takes so much pleasure in cultivating it, that we have concluded to gratify him and to keep that plan in view in his studies" (in Stephanie L. Herdrich and H. Barbara Weinberg, American Watercolors and Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: John Singer Sargent, 2000, p. 67).  Sargent began his formal art studies in Florence at the city's Academia delle Belle Arti in the early 1870s. In May 1874, at the age of 17, Sargent enrolled at the Parisian atelier of Carolus-Duran and attended drawing classes at the école des Beaux-Arts.

While Sargent's academic training occurred in Paris, he dreamed of Venice, a city he first visited with his family at the age of 14. In a letter to his friend Vernon Lee, he wrote: "I am sorry to leave Italy—that is to say, Venice, but on the other hand I am persuaded that Paris is the place to learn painting in. When I can paint, then away for Venice!" (in Marc Simpson, "Away for Venice," Uncanny Spectacle, 1997, p. 95).  In September 1880, Sargent made his first extended sojourn in the city and began painting there in earnest.  This initial foray lasted through February or March 1881 and solidified a romance between the artist and the fabled city that would last for more than thirty years.

Sargent's fondness for painting in Venice was certainly not unique. American artists including Benjamin West had been flocking there since the colonial period, but during the late 1870s the city itself became a premier destination and subject for painters and writers alike. William Gerdts notes that: "The 'invasion' of Venice by American artists can be pinpointed to the years 1879 and 1880, although there was a significant prelude in the nine-month visit there of Frank Duveneck, William Merritt Chase, and John Twachtman beginning in the autumn of 1877." Gerdts adds that, "Sargent began his long artistic association with Venice at a time when Venice was superseding Rome as the primary center for artistic activity among artists. He was invited into a defined community of Anglo-American expatriate society, and the artists Sargent came into contact with were those supported and patronized by this specialized colony" (Sargent's Venice, 2006, pp.163, 183). Patrons and artists were drawn to the seductive, decadent floating city for its art and architecture, a seemingly magical place immune from the vulgarities of modernity.

Sargent's earliest Venetian work is devoid of the archetypal scenes of gay crowds and bright, picturesque city vistas that many artists such as Maurice Brazil Prendergast chose.  In contrast, Sargent's views of the city largely comprise genre scenes of modern life, populated by working class men and women walking along the narrow streets or laboring quietly inside poorly-lit interiors. As with his Venetian Bead Stringers (ca. 1880-1882, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York), which shows three women working in a dim palazzo, Sargent's images from this period are often rendered in a dark, tonalist palette.  At a slightly later date, Sargent embraced aspects of Monet's Impressionist style, which in turn affected the character of his Venetian subjects.  Sargent most often abandoned the moody darkness of his earlier Venetian genre scenes to create dazzling architectural views filled with water and light.

Sargent's watercolors are frequently distinguished by cropped compositions, vivid hues, and confident, vigorous brushwork and are considered among his finest works.  The juncture of the Giudecca and Grand Canals provides the setting for Summer on the Giudecca. The Dogana or Customs House, sits off in the distance to the left; its famous sculpture Fortuna presides atop a great golden sphere above the building. The Dogana is framed within the brisk, sweeping lines of color that form the web of masts and rigging of the ships moored in the Giudecca.  The vibrant turquoise hull of the ship in the middle-ground and the edges of the gondola appear to mingle with the ripples in the water, blurring their boundaries while the tip of the boat's prow pierces the sun-washed buildings of the distant coastline. In the exaggerated foreground, a gondolier idles while he waits for the artist to finish his work. Though many artists painted from gondolas, Sargent was the only artist to do so consistently and to employ a low vantage point in the manner of a wide angle lens. As a consequence the viewer, like the artist, has the immediate experience, much as a tourist would, of floating along the Venetian canals.

Sargent's distinctive artistic vision in Summer on the Giudecca has a rare literary counterpart in the writing of his friend and ardent supporter Henry James, who had his own enduring affair with Venice. In his book, Italian Hours, James describes the precise location depicted in Sargent's watercolor: "The whole thing composes as if composition were the chief end of human institutions. The charming architectural promontory of the Dogana stretches out the most graceful of arms, balancing in its hand the gilded globe on which revolves the delightful satirical figure of a little weathercock of a woman ... On the other side of the canal twinkles and glitters the long row of the happy palaces which are mainly expensive hotels ...They are almost as charming from other places as they are from their own balconies, and share fully in that universal privilege of Venetian objects which consists of being both the picture and the point of view" (1909, pp.46-47).