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Wilfrid de Glehn (1870-1951), one of England's leadingImpressionists, was a close friend of the important Americanexpatriate John Singer Sargent. De Glehn held an important role inAnglo-American art circles, fraternizing with a group of prominentcultural figures that included painters Frank D. Millet and J. AldenWeir, architects Stanford White and Charles McKim, the collectorIsabella Stewart Gardner, and the novelist Edith Wharton. His ties tothe United States were further strengthened in 1904 when he marriedJane Erin Emmet, a member of the well known Emmet family ofpainters. De Glehn was one of Sargent's closest friends; the twoartists painted together in England, Italy, Corfu, and Spain. The104-page catalogue, which includes 47 full-page color illustrations,features an essay and entries by Laura Wortley, de Glehn's biographerand a noted scholar of British Impressionism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Nice Cover Art
I mistakenly thought that this was a journal of the subject (Lady Agnew) and artist (John Singer Sargent) discussing her background and details of the sitting, etc.However, it is just blank pages for you to write your personal journal. ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Madame X, Rosina Ferrara, the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, Gretchen Osgood Warren, Street in Venice, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau. Excerpt:Gretchen Warren of Beacon Hill, Boston Gretchen Osgood Warren (19 March 1868 September, 1961); the wife of Fiske Warren was an actress, singer and poet. The daughter of Dr. Hamilton Osgood and Margaret Cushing Osgood of Beacon Hill , Boston, Massachusetts , her younger sister was Mary Alden Childers wife of writer and Irish nationalist Robert Erskine Childers . Early life She could sing perfectly in pitch, write like an adult and recite poetry on command. Her upbringing in the affluent environment; that was turn of the century Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts ; allowed her to pursue music and drama to an extremely high level. Just down the street from the Osgood home was the Boston Athenaeum , where a long line of Osgoods, namely Frances Sargent Osgood and Samuel Stillman Osgood , are all listed on the "Register of the Proprietors" for the institution. Gretchen went on to study at Oxford and graduated with honors. John Singer Sargent "Mrs. Fiske Warren (Gretchen Osgood) and Her Daughter Rachel, 1903" John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent , the famed portraitist of Boston 's elite, was commissioned by Warren's husband, Fiske Warren to paint her portrait in April 1903. The sitting was done in Fenway Court , then the home of legendary Boston fine arts czar; Isabella Stewart Gardner . Warren is seen seated in a chair with her daughter Rachel Warren. The painting is often considered to be one of Sargent's prime portraits and usually appears in Sargent Estate Calendars and Postcards, Awards Works References (URLs online) Sources A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at John Singer Sargent item Self P... ... Read more

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A brilliant painter of society portraits, John Singer Sargent also devoted many years at the height of his career to a project of an entirely different order: an ambitious, multi-media decoration titled Triumph of Religion (1890-1919) for the Boston Public Library. The library cycle Sargent imagined as his most important work, however, would ultimately remain unfinished, quietly abandoned in the face of religious opposition, one critical painting short of completion. Truncation dramatically altered possible readings of Triumph, redirecting its narrative energies and generating new meanings in tension with the idea Sargent had proposed. In Painting Religion in Public, Sally Promey tells the story of an artist of international stature and the complex and consuming pictorial program he pursued in Boston. Highly celebrated in its day, with individual panels retaining immense popularity even in the years of discord, this artistic project and its constituent images tell us much about broad cultural and political exchanges concerning the public representation of religious content in the United States.

Sargent's library decoration attracted the attention of multiple audiences and engaged concurrent debates about class, race, art, and religion. Representatives of various religious and cultural backgrounds hailed portions of the cycle as indicative of the strength of their own positions, and reproductions of the images appeared in everything from books and encyclopedias to stained glass and public pageantry. Promey analyzes the conception and production of the cycle, persuasively demonstrating that Triumph of Religion, far from promoting a narrowly sectarian version of religious practice, represented instead Sargent's public recommendation of the privacy of modern belief. The artist recast contemporary religion as spirituality, she argues, linking it not with institutions and dogma but with personal subjectivity. For Sargent, this ideal was a sign of Western, especially American, progress. Carefully reconstructing patterns of reception in an increasingly diverse religious climate, and exploring the extent and character of Sargent's personal and artistic investment, Promey boldly illuminates the work Sargent hoped to make his masterpiece. At the same time, she enriches understanding of religious images in public places and popular imagination. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

FABULOUS!!!
This book is absolutely brilliant. A previous reviewer expressed their disappointment with the lack of images. I would first like to point out that a lack of images is no reason to give the book only one star, especially considering that they were able to recognize the fact that Promey is the first to write a book on what the reviewer conceded is "a basically unpublished subject." As for the reviewer's claim that this book is only suitable for the Art Historian, I would just like to say that I read this book when I was 13, and still managed to find it thoroughly interesting and engaging. Perhaps the reviewer's need for more pretty pictures than the author (wisely) chose to include is an indicator of a lack of education and imagination on their part rather than a lack of judgment on hers.

Sargent at the Boston Public Library
Although lacking in adequate color plates as expressed by a previous reviewer, this text is wonderful in its description ofthe history of the mural which took Sargent 30 years and was never completed probably because of the controversy arising out of how religion was viewed in public in 1919, a change from whenSargent started it in 1890. The book describes the history of the mural in the context of its time of diverse social, cultural and religious matters.After viewing the actual mural at the Boston Public Library, where it is, unfortunately, covered with dirt but is being restored and cleaned, one will be overwhelmed with this painting and find the book extremely interesting and full of important historical information, as well as understand why this mural is considered one of the most important pieces of public art.

Fascinating!
Promey leads the reader on an insightful exploration of Sargent's artistic and spiritual investment in _Triumph of Religion_.This book has changed the way I look at religious art in public places.

Terrific!
A fascinating book -- a major contribution to the history of American visual culture!This is a Sargent I hadn't seen before!The wealth of visual material in Promey's book (works of art, preparatory sketches andstudies, photographs, prints, cartoons) provides testimony that Sargent'sart was deeply informed by the culture of its time.It was also, as Promeyshows, responsive to the artist's own intellectual and personalcommitments.Highly recommended!

Great book!Compellingly narrated, beautifully illustrated
This is a convincing, original, and highly readable book.I've seen Sargent's Boston Public Library murals--now obscured by dirt and grime--many times.It was a real treat to see them in Promey's book,restored to their initial splendor.(I look forward to their scheduledrestoration too.)I read this book because the Boston Globe art criticcalled it a "dazzling must-read."And she was right! ... Read more

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A Touch of Blossom considers John Singer Sargent in the context of nineteenth-century botany, gynecology, literature, and visual culture and argues that the artist mobilized ideas of cross-fertilization and the hermaphroditic sexuality of flowers in his work to naturalize sexual inversion. In conceiving of his painting as an act of hand-pollination, Sargent was elaborating both a period poetics of homosexuality and a new sense of subjectivity, anticipating certain aspects of artistic modernism.
Assembling evidence from diverse realms visual culture (cartoons, greeting cards, costume design), medicine and botany (treatises and their illustrations), literature, letters, lexicography, and the visual arts this book situates the metaphors that structure Sargent's paintings in a broad cultural context. It offers in-depth readings of particular paintings and analyzes related projects undertaken by Sargent's friends in the field of painting and in other disciplines, such as gynecology and literature. ... Read more