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Lot Essay
Painted in 1912 on a visit to Italy where John Singer Sargent had traveled with his friends, Wilfred and Jane de Glehn, The Green Dress is sketched in Sargent's signature watercolor style of rapid brushwork executed with his unrivaled virtuosity. Regular companions of the artist on his trips abroad, the de Glehns often sat for Sargent, and appear in many watercolors over many years of friendship and travel. A gift from the artist to the de Glehns, the portrait is inscribed with Sargent's nickname for Wilfred: "to my friend Premp." It has remained in the de Glehn family until the present day.
According to a de Glehn family tradition, Sargent painted this work on a trip with the de Glehns to Italy. The occasion was provided by inclement weather, which kept the travelling party indoors for the day. The subject chosen here, apart from the dress of the painting's title, is Jane, wrapped in a cashmere shawl and reading a book. She is seated on a red Victorian sofa, behind which Sargent includes a corner of a mirror reflecting the back of her head and a portion of the room. She was a favored model of the artist and appeared in many of his compositions. As a body of work, her portraits include some of the artist's most stirring and brilliant imagery.
Over the years, many critics have noted Sargent's seemingly effortless ability to paint a wide range of subjects in watercolor. Evan Charteris, the artist's friend and early biographer, remarked on the startling sense of spontaneity in these works: "They have a happy air of impromptu," he wrote, "of the artist having come upon a scene at a particular moment and there and then translated it into paint. He set his face against anything like 'picture-making;' his watercolors are fragmentary--pieces of the visible world broken off because they appealed to his eye. His power is displayed in the supremacy of his drawing, the opulence of his colour, the skill of his statement, finite as it often is, and the glowing warmth of his sunlit scenes. And in these he excels, not so much by the subtlety of his omissions as by the harmony of his assertions and his exuberant objectivity." (John Sargent, New York, 1927, p. 224).
His portraiture was as much a forte of the artist as his landscapes. One of his students, Julie Heyneman, once marveled at his skill in capturing a sitter's character with an economy of technique: "He showed how much would be expressed in painting the form of the brow, the cheekbones, and the moving muscles around the eyes and mouth, where the character betrayed itself most readily; and under his hands, a head would be an amazing likeness long before he had so much as indicated the features themselves." (C. Little, The Watercolors of John Singer Sargent, Berkeley, California, 1998, p. 13).
His achievement is perhaps best summarized by a more recent admirer, Donelson Hoopes, who wrote in his seminal treatise on Sargent's watercolors that "there are few artists who have responded with greater visual excitement to the world of light and form. Sargent's watercolors obey the requirement of art in the most important way: they remain fresh forever, they endure." (Sargent Watercolors, New York, 1970, p. 20).
This work will be included in the forthcoming John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonn by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, in collaboration with Warren Adelson and Elizabeth Oustinoff.
According to a de Glehn family tradition, Sargent painted this work on a trip with the de Glehns to Italy. The occasion was provided by inclement weather, which kept the travelling party indoors for the day. The subject chosen here, apart from the dress of the painting's title, is Jane, wrapped in a cashmere shawl and reading a book. She is seated on a red Victorian sofa, behind which Sargent includes a corner of a mirror reflecting the back of her head and a portion of the room. She was a favored model of the artist and appeared in many of his compositions. As a body of work, her portraits include some of the artist's most stirring and brilliant imagery.
Over the years, many critics have noted Sargent's seemingly effortless ability to paint a wide range of subjects in watercolor. Evan Charteris, the artist's friend and early biographer, remarked on the startling sense of spontaneity in these works: "They have a happy air of impromptu," he wrote, "of the artist having come upon a scene at a particular moment and there and then translated it into paint. He set his face against anything like 'picture-making;' his watercolors are fragmentary--pieces of the visible world broken off because they appealed to his eye. His power is displayed in the supremacy of his drawing, the opulence of his colour, the skill of his statement, finite as it often is, and the glowing warmth of his sunlit scenes. And in these he excels, not so much by the subtlety of his omissions as by the harmony of his assertions and his exuberant objectivity." (John Sargent, New York, 1927, p. 224).
His portraiture was as much a forte of the artist as his landscapes. One of his students, Julie Heyneman, once marveled at his skill in capturing a sitter's character with an economy of technique: "He showed how much would be expressed in painting the form of the brow, the cheekbones, and the moving muscles around the eyes and mouth, where the character betrayed itself most readily; and under his hands, a head would be an amazing likeness long before he had so much as indicated the features themselves." (C. Little, The Watercolors of John Singer Sargent, Berkeley, California, 1998, p. 13).
His achievement is perhaps best summarized by a more recent admirer, Donelson Hoopes, who wrote in his seminal treatise on Sargent's watercolors that "there are few artists who have responded with greater visual excitement to the world of light and form. Sargent's watercolors obey the requirement of art in the most important way: they remain fresh forever, they endure." (Sargent Watercolors, New York, 1970, p. 20).
This work will be included in the forthcoming John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonn by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, in collaboration with Warren Adelson and Elizabeth Oustinoff.