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An Artist in His Studio
John Singer Sargent American
Not on view
Sargent first met Italian painter Ambrogio Raffele (1845–1928) at Purtud in the Val d’Aosta, Italy, in the summer of 1903. Raffele enjoyed a long career as a landscape and figurative artist, working in a vigorous, naturalistic style akin to Sargent’s.
Here, he is shown in the cramped conditions of his bedroom at Purtud with a large landscape of trees and cattle propped between the washstand and the bed. Paradoxically, the artist, who is known for working outdoors, is shown constructing a painting from preliminary studies in his makeshift studio. Raffele peers through the fingers of his right hand at a small sketch held in the other along with a palette and fistful of brushes, as he contemplates his next move. Sargent’s brilliant rendering of light on the rumpled sheets of the unmade bed fills nearly half the canvas.
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