Note: Registration is required to attend. You can register for free on Eventbrite.
The Art League Visiting Artist Series:
Richard Ormond on John Singer Sargent’s Watercolors
Tuesday, October 3, 2017 at 6:00 pm
105 North Union Street, Alexandria, VA
Co-curator of the current blockbuster exhibit Sargent: The Watercolours at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, Richard Ormond gives insight into John Singer Sargent’s plein air painting expeditions. As a respite from formal studio commissions, Sargent spent his summers from 1900-1914 painting a series of deeply personal and appealing watercolors.
Sargent’s work in watercolor was unorthodox. He overturned traditional compositional standards and avoided the obviously picturesque, developing an audacious and sophisticated technique, an expression of his personal modern aesthetic. He ignored the celebrated panoramas and the traditional description of landscape; instead he challenged the viewer with unconventional angles, confrontational poses and geometric forms. This absorbing lecture takes a fresh look at Sargent’s idiosyncratic view of the world through watercolor.
