A
Street in Algiers
John Singer
Sargent -- American
painter
1880
Adelson
Galleries, New York
Oil on panel
13.5 x 10 in
Jpg: artnet.com
Although the title
of the painting
refers to Algiers, most sources believe the painting was actually done
in Morocco at Tangier. In 1880 Sargent and his party of friends
traveled
from Spain to Morocco (and what is vaguely referred to as "North
Africa")
for about six weeks. His exact itenery during this time, from what I
can
tell, is not perfectly clear. As you can see, the oil on board of about
that size falls in line with other "oil on board" of this period were
he
focuses on the small buildings and steep streets such as his Moorish
Buildings on a Cloudy Day which was very much in line with the
topography
of Tangier. [1]
Moorish
Buildings on a Cloudy Day
1879-80
In doing research
on Sir John Lavery I discovered that Lavery visited Tangier thirteen
years
after Sargent and he gave us a better perspective of the lay of the
city
as it crept up the side of the hill. Certainly in the latter part of
the
19th century Tangier changed little between the visits of the two
artists.
Sir
John Lavery
(1856-1941)
-- Irish Painter
Tangier,
The White City
1893
Françoise
Bernard Briès
(a friend of the
JSS Gallery) makes the astute observation (below) that Sargent did
in fact visit Algiers, however neither of us have found anything yet
that
would pin down exactly what years he might have been there.
From:
Françoise Bernard
Briès
(F B
B@JSSGallery.org)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul
2003
I don't know if you
mention [but
Sargent] probably was in Algeria, because his name and short biography
appears in a book "Les ARtistes de l'Algérie" by
Elisabeth
Casenave with a little picture in black and white called "Côte
algérienne et mauresque" [thumbnail] and also mentions other
painting called "Côte près d'Alger".
There is no
indications about dates
and where these paintings are now located...
I will be curious
to know where and
when he went in Algeria.
Notes:
1) Ten of
Sargent's known works from this period were paintbox-size oils on wood
panels, measuring about 10 by 14 inches: four of these are now in the
collection
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; another is at the Yale
University
Art Gallery, New Haven (Adelson
Galleries)
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