Sargent

"Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends unites informative essays by noted scholars with a wealth of imagery to offer fresh insights into Sargent's life and work. The book also includes drawings, early works, a richly illustrated chronology, and new research, making it one of the most comprehensive volumes on this renowned American painter." -Artdaily.org "Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends, written by Richard Ormond, one of the foremost authorities on the artist, showcases Sargent's cosmopolitan career in a new light--through his bold portraits of artists, writers, actors, and musicians, many of them his close friends--giving us a picture of the artist as an intellectual and connoisseur of the music, art, and literature of his day. . . . Accompanying [major exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum of Art], this is the first book devoted to the entire career of this renowned American painter through these brilliant portraits." -ArtFixdaily.com

"Think Gilded Age, that glittering era of sophistication and new money at the end of the 19th century. John Singer Sargent painted and lived it. He cultivated commissions from its rich, and became famous for his luscious, flattering, society portraits, which is exactly what critics often held against him. And over time, the go-to portrait painter of his day lost interest in the grand paintings that made his name, preferring people in informal settings, and watercolors regarded as some of the finest ever painted. . . 90 years after his death, in 1925, it is those extraordinary, telling portraits that are treasured all over the world." -CBS NEWS