The artist John Singer Sargent visited all of the fashionable nineteenth-century holiday spots: Florence, Rome, Venice, Capri, Palestine and exotic Florida. Sargent seems to have been someone for whom work was a form of relaxation–indeed without his paints or watercolour box handy, he must have felt naked. If the works in “Sargent abroad”, the current exhibition at Adelson Galleries, are any indication, he was usually busy capturing some unnoticed corner of a patio or a friend dozing under a tree. Adelson has gathered over fifty of these oil sketches and watercolours; among other things they show that the off-duty Sargent was probably more interested in landscapes than the people who occupied them. This is not a selling show and is supplemented by loans from private collectors and the Metropolitan, Brooklyn and Boston museums.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Sargent’s summer holidays warm up NYC'
