Cleveland Museum of Art

The Patio

John Singer Sargent

Date

1908

Medium

watercolor with traces of gouache over graphite

Culture

America, late 19th-early 20th Century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Sargent was born in Italy, studied in France, and worked chiefly in England, but he never renounced his American citizenship. As a young man, Sargent achieved fame and wealth as a portraitist, but he gradually tired of painting wealthy, superficial aristocrats. In his later years he focused increasingly on watercolor. Along with Winslow Homer, Sargent was the major artist to develop a spontaneous approach toward watercolor. Rather than carefully layering his pigments, he dashed off his paintings in a single sitting, allowing the colors to freely blend together.

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