New York’s Brooklyn Museum and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts are joining forces to present a landmark exhibition of John Singer Sargent’s watercolors (1856-1925). The exhibition, aptly titled John Singer Sargent Watercolors, will bring together 93 works acquired by both museums during the early 20th century. The Brooklyn Museum’s 38 watercolors were largely purchased form Sargent’s 1909 debut exhibition in New York and The MFA’s works were acquired from a New York Gallery in 1912.
The institutions have been working together on a year-long study of Sargent’s watercolors, which he painted fervently. During his long career, Sargent created over 2,000 watercolors depicting everything from the English countryside to Venetian scenes as well as paintings of the Middle East, Montana, Maine, Florida, and the American west. Sargent painted a number of watercolor portraits of Bedouins and fishermen from the Middle East as well as the native people of the American west. A section of the exhibition will be devoted to the findings from the museums’ extensive study; the analysis revealed new insights into Sargent’s drawing techniques, paper preparation, and use of pigments.
John Singer Sargent Watercolors will go on view at the Brooklyn Museum on April 5, 2013 where it will remain until July 28, 2013. The exhibition will then travel to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts where it will stay from October 13, 2013 until January 20, 2014. The show will make a final appearance at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 2014.
