{"id":8374,"date":"2017-07-28T10:41:52","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T09:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8374"},"modified":"2017-10-19T14:00:57","modified_gmt":"2017-10-19T13:00:57","slug":"john-singer-sargent-the-watercolours-exhibition-dulwich-picture-gallery-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8374","title":{"rendered":"John Singer Sargent, <em>The Watercolours<\/em>, Dulwich Picture Gallery, reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>John Singer Sargent, <em>The Watercolours<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk\/whats-on\/exhibitions\/2017\/june\/sargent-the-watercolours\/\">Dulwich Picture Gallery<\/a>, 21 June \u2013 8 October 2017.<\/h5>\n<p>This is not the first exhibition of Sargent\u2019s watercolours; a little fossicking around on the web will find you a YouTube video of comparable exhibitions in Houston and Boston.  So, why is it that a painter known mostly for his turn-of-the-twentieth-century society portraits in oils should excite such interest as a watercolourist? Perhaps it is the sheer technical brilliance of these watercolours; the sheer \u2018I have the technique so I\u2019m going to use it\u2019 hutzpah of this astonishing painter. As the wonderful catalogue accompanying the exhibition notes, Sargent felt the watercolours \u2018keep up my morale\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>The exhibition is divided into four broad areas:  fragments; cities; landscapes and figures.  The first of these, \u2018Fragments\u2019 contains paintings which are almost literally fragments, as the pictures are cropped views of objects seen on Sargent\u2019s extensive travels, not only around southern Europe but also the Middle East. These paintings are often low vantage views of parts of buildings or ensembles such as Venetian fishing boats where the concentration is on the masts and the sails hanging in clusters, or the amazing \u2018Hull of a Boat\u2019 from around 1922. In this painting, Sargent\u2019s viewpoint is from right up close under the wooden hull of a boat suspended on poles and beams. And the viewer is right towards the stern of the boat near the rudder. The boat feels massively above the viewer; we are crowded in with Sargent under the structure. And Sargent\u2019s brilliance is to make this watercolour with its dark browns and greens enfold us and hold us in his view, as the sky, indicated by paper left deliberately blank and light, shows us the openness beyond the hull.<\/p>\n<p>Sargent\u2019s \u2018cropping\u2019 view is epitomised in a view of Spain\u2019s iconic Alhambra citadel. This is a low view of the bottom parts of two closely neighbouring pillars and some of the tessellated floor they rest on along with a tiled panel of wall. Again, Sargent\u2019s skill is to fill this small moment with light, so that the viewer is pulled into an intimate relation with this small part of a much larger and \u2018greater\u2019 whole. \u2018Venice, steps of a Palace\u2019 is a view of just that. Clearly painted on a bobbing gondola on one of Venice\u2019s canals, Sargent concentrates on the murky canal splashing onto the water steps of one of Venice\u2019s palaces. Here, too, the reader is taken to view something they would ordinarily pass by. <\/p>\n<p>Sargent is a genius with moving water. There are number of his water colours which focus on streams and cascades. \u2018In the Tyrol\u2019 is one of a series of studies of mountain streams. In this and other paintings, Sargent just seems to capture the moving water at a \u2018fascination point\u2019; yet again, pulling the viewer towards the moving water captured with wonderful technique. <\/p>\n<p>Such a sense of the ordinary picked out with Sargent\u2019s extraordinary skill is embodied in what are the most revelatory of the exhibition\u2019s paintings, Sargent\u2019s paintings of the First World War. His figure paintings of soldiers resting are almost to be expected, such was Sargent\u2019s almost obsession with reclining figures. And \u2018Thou shalt not steal\u2019 shows two soldiers, one in a kilt, scrumping from a local orchard. But elsewhere, Sargent\u2019s skill with landscape lights on scenes which are almost epiphanic, such as \u2018A Tarpaulin over a Dug-out, Ransart\u2019, which dates from 1918.  Here, the title tells us exactly what we\u2019re looking at.  But, as ever, what is a very ordinary moment Sargent makes revelatory. Unlike the other war artists who have presented that war as wet and bloody, which it clearly was, Sargent shows the drapery of the tarpaulin in hot sunshine.  And shows us, in an instant, another dimension to the received view.  <\/p>\n<h5>Ian Pople<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Singer Sargent, The Watercolours, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 21 June \u2013 8 October 2017. This is not the first exhibition of Sargent\u2019s watercolours; a little fossicking around on the web will find you a YouTube video of comparable exhibitions in Houston and Boston. So, why is it that a painter known mostly for his turn-of-the-twentieth-century [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[12,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>John Singer Sargent, The Watercolours, Dulwich Picture Gallery, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8374\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"John Singer Sargent, The Watercolours, Dulwich Picture Gallery, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Singer Sargent, The Watercolours, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 21 June \u2013 8 October 2017. 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