he
Hermit
(Il Solitario)
John Singer
Sargent
-- American
painter
1908
The
Metropolitan
Museum
of Art, New York
Oil on
canvas
95.9 x 96.5 cm
(37 3/4 by
38 in.)
Rogers fund
1911
Jpg:
local / The
Met
A piece of
extraordinary
brilliant execution. The first impression is that of actual blinding
sunlight
and shadow among the eucalyptus stems of a southern forest; one is
there
in the hot atmosphere; the dazing effect on the brain, the coming
headache,
are admirably suggested. It is only after some time that you make out
in
the tangle of lights and forms of two deer and of a naked hermit
reclining
among the rocks. . . .
(Lawrence Binyon, "New
English Art Club," The Saturday Review, 107, May 29, 1909, P. 684)
Sargent actually
packed a
stuffed gazelle
which he took with him on this trip and painted twice in this picture.
His friend, Henry Tonks pokes fun at his manipulating the scene in his
own caricature of "Sargent Sketching in the Alps".
Henry
Tonks
Sargent
Sketching in the Alps
See
as it hung in the Met
2003
Note:
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