Sargent and Paris

A fascinating look at John Singer Sargent’s formative years as a young painter in Paris, a city that helped forge his artistic identity and sparked his rise to the pinnacle of the nineteenth-century art world In 1874, eighteen-year-old American artist John Singer Sargent went to Paris to become a painter.Ten years later, he would become an art-world sensation when he sparked controversy with his scandalous portrait Madame X at the 1884 Salon.Sargent and Paris focuses on this decisive early decade in the artist’s career, when he first achieved recognition for ambitious portraits and bold canvases that pushed the boundaries of convention.Eight incisive essays by the world’s foremost Sargent scholars explore his life in Paris-then the epicenter of the cultural world-and the cosmopolitan circle of artists, writers, and cultivated patrons that nurtured his career and helped forge his artistic identity.Authors highlight the painter’s connections to giants of the Parisian art scene as well as