On
His Holidays
John
Singer Sargent
-- American painter
1901
Lady
Lever Art Gallery
Port
Sunlight Village,
England.
Oil on
canvas
135.9
x 242.6 cm (53 1/2 x 95 1/2
in.)
Jpg: Local
(click on the
image to step
closer)
The painting is of
Alexander McCulloch
(1887 - 1951). He was with his father George McCulloch (thumbnail) and
John during a trip to the Sundal Valley in Norway in 1901.
Alexander
was something like 14 years old at the time and Sargent paints him with
his school cap on.
When you see this
thing in a gallery,
it's huge and nearly takes up a whole wall. At almost two and a half
meters
across (almost 8 feet), the painting gives you an incredable feeling of
being right there on the water with him. Sargent has been able to
capture
the force and motion of the water. You can almost hear this painting.
For John, the
challenge was multi-facited.
In one sense, it's a landscape painting on a stream, but it is more
than
that. The size of this canvas also lends itself to a deliberate
portrait,
and even a still-life of caught fish towards the right of the canvas
which,
when you really think about it, isn't too dissimilar to the one of the
more than a hundred still-lifes of dead fish done by William Merritt
Chase
which he was famous for.
William
Merritt Chase.
Still
Life with Fish and Plate
Date?
Notes:
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