John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1883-1899. The Complete Paintings, Volume 5 »

A great-nephew of John Singer Sargent, Richard Ormond is a Sargent scholar and an art historian. He is the author or coauthor of books on Sargent, Landseer, Winterhalter, and Lord Leighton, and he is former deputy director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, and director of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Elaine Kilmurray is research director of the Sargent catalogue raisonné. She lectures internationally and has contributed to numerous books, periodicals, and exhibition catalogues on the artist.

The fifth volume of the John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonné encompasses a remarkably productive span in the beloved American painter’s life. The young artist moved from Paris to London during this period and successfully ignited his career as a portraitist, and this time also marked his experimentation with Impressionist techniques. These pages contain the first detailed account of Sargent’s relationship with Claude Monet, including letters—most published for the first time here—from the artist to the great Impressionist. This exquisitely illustrated volume also covers the period when Sargent journeyed to Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Spain, North Africa, and Italy in search of inspiration for a mural cycle commissioned by the Boston Public Library. The works he painted as source material included here stand in stark contrast to the sensuous, painterly exercises of the early and mid-1880s, underlining his versatility and artistic reach.

As in the previous volumes in this series, the images in this book are reproduced in full color and documented in depth, with complete provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography, and are accompanied by relevant studies and related drawings.