At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, an exhibition dedicated to John Singer Sargent celebrates the link between the American artist and the Mediterranean, tracing a central moment in his life. In particular, the exhibition traces a pivotal moment in the painter’s life, dwelling on his stay on Capri in the summer of 1878, when, in his early twenties, Sargent found in that island and its inhabitants a source of inspiration destined to profoundly mark his painting. The exhibition, open until Aug. 3, brings together nearly one hundred works, many of them executed in that very summer, when Sargent began to break away from academicism to experiment with a freer and more immediate painting style.
Among the most prominent subjects in the paintings of that period is Rosina Ferrara, a seventeen-year-old girl from Capri who became Sargent’s favorite model. Her figure, with marked features and an enigmatic gaze, was for the artist a symbol of authentic and unconventional Mediterranean beauty. Unlike the idealized models of the classical or academic tradition, Rosina represented a concrete femininity rooted in the daily life of the island. The canvases dedicated to her show a balance between realism and idealization, marking an important shift in the representation of the female figure in nineteenth-century art.
Capri. Ragazza sul tetto, John Singer Sargent. Olio su tela, 1878, via domusweb.it
Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the generation of artists of which Sargent was also a member sought new sources of inspiration outside traditional cultural centers. Capri and southern Italy, already frequented by painters such as Fortuny and writers such as Alphonse de Lamartine, were favorite destinations for art tourism in search of authenticity. For Sargent, that trip was also an opportunity for comparison with other European and American artists, who saw in Italian landscapes and its people a simplicity far removed from the formalisms of official art.
Sargent’s Campania works are distinguished by a luminous use of color, with particular attention to white, which in the canvases devoted to Capri becomes a symbol of purity and light. Scenes of everyday life, portraits and landscapes are treated with rapid, vibrant painting that sets aside compositional rigidity in favor of visual immediacy. In his canvases we catch the reflections of a pictorial culture that looks as much to the Spanish tradition as to French Impressionist experiments, but with a personal and recognizable voice.
Testa di ragazza di Capri, John Singer Sargent. Olio su tela, 1878, via domusweb.it
One hundred years after the artist’s death, the New York exhibition aims to restore Sargent’s complexity as a portraitist of American and British high society, the role for which he is best known, but also as a keen observer of more marginal realities. The Italian period was a moment of creative freedom for him that would continue to influence his later production.
The article The exhibition at the MET chronicling Sargent’s summer on Capri comes from TheNewyorker.
