John Singer Sargent

A companionable introduction to Sargent's life and work, this splendidly illustrated entry in Abrams's Library of American Art series concedes that the American painter, born in Italy and residing mostly in London and Paris, clung to the status quo and calculatedly borrowed from the realist, impressionist and aesthetic movements of his day. But Fairbrother, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, rejects the modernist dismissal of Sargent (1856-1925) as a facile illustrator, and instead profiles a virtuoso of stunningly accurate, provocative transcriptions of reality. The author proposes that the emotional volatility and edge of Sargent's work may have been shaped by homeorotic attraction felt by the shy, fastidious bachelor. This monograph pays particular attention to the exotic, sensuous early genre scenes, the marvelous diaphanous watercolors and to recent finds, such as Sargent's dramatic, idealized nude of an African American WW I veteran. (June)