Object details
Object number
P3w17
Creator(s)
John Singer Sargent
(Florence, 1856 - 1925, London)
Title
A Tent in the Rockies
Date
1916
Medium
Watercolor on paper
Dimensions
38 x 52 cm (14 15/16 x 20 1/2 in.)
Additional Dimensions
Frame: 64 cm x 77.5 cm (25 3/16 x 30 1/2 in.)
Signatures, inscriptions, and markings
Signed in ink (bottom left): John S. Sargent
Provenance
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the gallery Doll & Richards, Boston on 26 October 1916 for $325.
Commentary
Sargent began many of his watercolors with careful pencil drawings that laid out the overall composition of each picture. If you look closely you can see traces of pencil in the folds of the tent’s opening. Light and shade effects, however, were rarely indicated through pencil under-drawings. Sargent would leave that to the skill of his brush in mixing colors, giving his watercolors their fresh beauty.
Bibliography
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 33.
Philip Hendy. European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1974), pp. 231-32.
Rebecca W. Karo. “Ah Wilderness! Sargent in the Rockies, 1916.” Fenway Court (1976), pp. 20-29.
Alan Chong et al. (eds.) Eye of the Beholder: Masterpieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 2003), pp. 206-7.
Kathleen A. Foster. American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent. Exh. cat. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2017), pp. 328-29, fig. 281.
Courtney Mason, "John Singer Sargent's Sojourn in the Rocky Mountains," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 14 October 2024, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/john-singer-sargents-sojourn-rocky-mountains
Gallery
Blue Room
Rights and reproductions
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