An overview starting with the sculptural folds of the late 13th century, peaking with Raphael and Rembrandt, and dissolving with Renoir and Sargent in the early 20th century.
Sargent
In Spain, Sorolla was first Naturalist, then his style loosened to resemble that of Sargent; Zorn in Sweden painted early detailed watercolours before loosening up in oils.
His most radical watercolours were painted after he closed his portrait studio in 1907, when they cam to transcend reality.
The man in the background is the husband of Mrs Phelps Stokes, posing as a surrogate for a Great Dane. Note the Renaissance elbow.
How the grand-daughters of the Duchess of Devonshire posed for the triple portrait and referred back to any orgiastic scene of bacchanalian revelry.
Nesbit’s new husband shot dead the acclaimed architect Stanford White in Madison Square Garden, in a fit of insane jealousy.
By 1901, he was fast approaching his fifties and rather staid. This portrait of Evelyn Nesbit was quite out of character, and nearly got him killed later.
Sargent’s paintings of Claude Monet and other artists painting, mostly in front of the motif, form a unique record of painters and their techniques.
From Ondines, who kill men by their curse, to a frozen fountain in Agubbio, and parks in New York, Paris and Rome.
Paul Nash and John Singer Sargent’s paintings for the Hall of Remembrance, the tragic loss of Eric Ravilious, a Serb painter executed in a concentration camp, and more.
The Eclectic Light Company 