Pintando no atelier XXXII

John Singer Sargent, An Artist in his Studio (1904, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

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«An Artist in His Studio was painted in August 1904 at Purtud, while Sargent was on a summer vacation in the Italian Alps. It depicts Sargent’s friend, the Italian artist Ambrogio Raffele, deep in contemplation, working on a bucolic landscape. Raffele is using his cramped and untidy hotel room as a studio; he and his landscape painting are shifted to the left corner. Surrounded by smaller sketches presumably made outdoors, Raffele holds a palette that bears blobs of thick, bright paint, a fistful of brushes, and what may be a snapshot at which he squints as he considers his efforts. Raffele’s straw hat and shirt are tossed carelessly across the rumpled white linens of his unmade bed. The pictorial challenge of painting white on white is one Sargent particularly enjoyed; he handled it here with an extraordinary display of brilliant brushwork».

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cf. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.