In "John Singer Sargent," Trevor Fairbrother, Deputy Director for Art and John and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern Art at the Seattle Art Museum, presents a rich and thoughtful interpretation of Sargent and his art. Fairbrother explores the opposing elements that made Sargent a complex figure and a great artist: he accepted his New England Puritan heritage but, for the most part, lived grandly in Europe; he achieved wealth and fame as a portraitist while hoping that his murals in Boston cultural institutions would win him a loftier reputation; his art revels in the sumptuous effects of brilliant paint surfaces but Sargent himself was shy and retiring in public; the worldy, sophisticated persona of a preeminent artist of the Gilded Age may have concealed a conflicted sexuality.
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