Art History Textbooks ReviewsArt History Textbooks Reviews

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Book was in good readable condition was shipped to me in an expedient manner, exceeds expectations. Would buy from again, trusted seller.

I though I was recieving an actual book
luckily I got a binder for this. I was planning on selling this after I was done in a class, but now I can just give it away for it seems to have a less value meaning to an actual book. maybe I messed up and didn't read the description. However, it does have all that is needed.

A Sargent Treasury
First... some disclosure. I am a "card-carrying" admirer of John Singer Sargent and of all of his work. I have more than fifty books on Sargent. And I am an obsessive amateur watercolorist; half of our home is filled with paintings, paintings in progress and painting supplies. But, a little rational mitigation... I am not monomaniacal. I also deeply appreciate the work of other greats such as John Whorf and Winslow Homer. And today's Trevor Chamberlain, John Yardley, David Curtis, etc. So, if you like this kind of work, then you'll love this book.

Love it even without any fancy academic theory, art history or the like. Like me, you can just look at a reproduction of an alpine brook in watercolor by Sargent and simply say, "Wow!" And pass your eyes over every millimeter. "Look how he suggests those rocks and ferns!" But then I also greatly enjoy reading the textual background. Where it was done. In what context. Sargent's visits and vacations. The work's provenance. This last can be facinating as in the case of Sargent's recently surfaced, fabulous and obviously originally "mis-acquired" by a maid, "Spanish Dancer". Why, if my own work was any good and further if I did employ a maid then I'd be very careful to... :)
Well, obviously I can speak only as a naive Sargent enthusiast, but I can't recommend this book more. I read it over and over. I'd have paid twice the price.

Approximately 11 & 1/2 by 9 inches and 426 pages. Published by the Metropolitan in 2000. An excellent physical production in the usual quality manner of Yale University Press, lately the source of excellent series on artists. (Here, Sargent but also the likes of William Merritt Chase. Yale was a physical partner in this particular Sargent enterprise.) This book is organized roughly chronologically, from Sargent's youth onwards. However, there's much more; an Essay on Materials and Techniques, a Sargent Chronology, an Exhibition History, a Record of Travel and Other Studies, and an appendix, Works of Questionable Attribution.

Finally, for some, the category "drawing" can be confusing, as is evident here it also includes watercolors. Go figure. But, I don't mind the nomenclature as long as the academics provide me with pretty decent reproductions and an interesting history.