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Celebrated as the leading society portraitist of his era, write the NGA experts, John Singer Sargent influenced a generation of American painters. His personal captivation with Spain resulted in a remarkable body of work that documents his extensive travels from the north to the south and to the island of Majorca. Over three decades Sargent responded to the country’s rich culture by producing landscapes and marine scenes, pictures of everyday life, and architectural studies, as well as sympathetic portrayals of the locals he encountered. La Carmencita by John Singer Sargent is one such painting I would like to learn more about… https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2022/sargent-and-spain.html

In 1889, while visiting the Exposition Universelle in Paris, John Singer Sargent had his first encounter with Carmen Dauset Moreno, known as La Carmencita (1868 – 1910), the famous Spanish-style dancer, who danced at the Nouveau Cirque with great acclaim. Sponsored by theatrical agent Bolossy Kiralfy at first, La Carmencita became a theatrical sensation in the United States dancing in the ballet Antiope. In 1890, under the management of John Koster and Albert Bial, she performed in their 23rd Street Concert Hall with great success. Carmencita is the first woman performer to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and may have been the first woman to appear in a motion picture in America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmencita

Sargent, enamored with Spanish music, and dancing since the 1880s, described La Carmencita as a bewildering superb creature. In 1890, the same year William Merritt Chase did his portrait of the famous dancer, Sargent persuaded a restless and demanding Carmencita pose for him. He was restless as well… and he made many studies of her dancing, but in the end, he opted to portray her in a stationary pose. According to the MET Museum experts the critics were divided… how dare did Sargent represent ‘a common music hall performer in such a monumental way…’ https://www.culturezohn.com/culturedpearls/tag/The+Met

Painted in bold colours, hands on hip, right leg extended, against a dark background to highlight his skills as a painter Sargent creates the portrait of a snapshot posing dancer. Her posture is elegant and majestic, projecting her magnetism. Her face, like that of several of Sargent’s models of the time, is rendered white and masklike from cosmetics, with arched eyebrows, hinting at a proud, even haughty presence. Using a charming theme, swift brushstrokes, and washes of warm earthy colours, Sargent created a magnificent painting of feminine allure. When during 1890 La Carmencita was exhibited in Chicago, crowds of visitors went to the Art Institute to admire the famous painting. In 1892, two years after its creation, the painting was purchased from the artist by the French state. Today La Carmencita is in the collection Musée d’Orsay. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/21453

For a PowerPoint on Sargent and Spain, please…  Click HERE!

From the Library of Congress, Washington DC, La Carmencita, the Spanish Performer, as she danced in front of an Edison motion picture camera. Filmed by William Heise, March 10-16, 1894, in Edison’s Black Maria studio… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-15jwb1ZTMA

The Sargent and Spain Exhibition can be seen in the National Gallery in Washington DC (October 2, 2022 – January 2, 2023). According to the NGA Experts, the Sargent and Spain  Exhibition presents for the first time, approximately 120 dazzling oils, watercolors, and drawings, many of which are rarely exhibited. Also featured from the artist’s travels are some 28 never-before-published photographs, several almost certainly taken by Sargent himself. It is an Exhibition worth visiting! https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2022/sargent-and-spain.html

The American artist Edward Hopper is acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of the 20^th century. He is known for his oil paintings of urban life scenes, behind windows and across streets, dating from the 1920s to the 1960s, some of which have become highly popular images, like the Nighthawks (1942, Oil on canvas, 84.1 x 152.4 cm, Art Institute of Chicago). He is less known for the attention he has paid to landscapes, particularly landscapes of New England, like Cape Ann Granite (1928. Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 102.3 cm. Private Collection). He is even less known for his early illustrations… like Smash the Hun…his ticket to success.

In 1918 Edward Hopper was thirty-six years old and still struggling for artistic recognition. He was born on July 22, 1882, in the charming riverfront village of Upper Nyack, New York, where he spent his formative years. He grew up, comfortably, embraced by an educated family that was involved in the arts, and went to museums, concerts, and other cultural events. Inclined to draw as a child, Hopper was supported by his family to pursue the arts, but being of practical mind, his parents suggested he chose to study Illustration for a career that would provide him a steady income. Hopper took courses at the Correspondence School of Illustrating and at the New York School of Art. Noted illustrator/painters Arthur Keller, Frank Vincent Du Mond, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Robert Henri were among his teachers, and John Sloan, who worked regularly as a commercial illustrator prior to 1916, was an early influence. His strong, and dynamic illustrations for trade publications are memorable… but this is not what he really wanted, and by 1918 he was getting restless… https://www.thoughtco.com/edward-hopper-biography-4165484 and https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Unknown-Hopper–Edward-Hopper-as-Illustr/3CFFF3BDEE4BBFF2

Unduly… it was the art of illustration that won Hopper his first kind of fame. According to Gail Levin, who wrote Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, Bert Edward Barnes, editor of the Morse Dry Dock Dial, liked his work and probably persuaded him to enter the contest for a propaganda poster sponsored by the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation in 1918. The agency had been created in September 1916 with the authority to build, purchase, lease, or requisition vessels needed for the war effort.

Barnes encouraged Hopper to visit the shipyard to get the right feel, and volunteered one of his employees, Pete Shea, to model for the poster. He also had Shea photographed in the pose and gave a print to Hopper, who recalled in an ironical sketch: “I got this big Irishman to pose for me in the shipyards, with the background of ship’s ribs, that sort of things. I had his swigging a maul, and the maul was aimed at a bloody bayonet sticking unpin one corner. I titled it ‘Smash the Hun’; it was pretty awful and I don’t think it was ever published.” In fact, Hopper’s design appeared on the cover of the Morse Dry Dock Dial for February 1919.

The four-colour poster won Hopper the three-hundred-dollar first prize among fourteen hundred contestants. Since the armistice was declared before the poster could be reproduced for mass distribution, Hopper’s fame came from the exhibition of Smash the Hun along with nineteen other finalists in August 1918, in the window of Gimbel’s department store on Broadway, where, according to the press, ‘thousands’ saw the ‘stirring pictures placed on vie.’ The papers reported that the wave of popular excitement swept up Hopper’s model, Shea: he enlisted in the Navy.

Interesting to read… Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography by Gail Levin https://books.google.gr/books?id=6Dh2gFK-lecC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=Hopper+Smash+the+Hun&source=bl&ots=qjJ-w8SQPt&sig=ACfU3U2U_AkbuBJuhjWMNGjQXS_edv90bw&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwif6dug0Yf6AhXGSPEDHWFXCpw4ChDoAXoECBQQAw#v=onepage&q=Hopper%20Smash%20the%20Hun&f=false pp. 108, 116-117

For a PowerPoint, titled Edward Hopper: The Early Years, please… Check HERE!

An interesting Video Presentation of The Unknown Hopper: Edward Hopper as Illustrator. The Video was created for the Exhibition that was on view at Norman Rockwell Museum between June 7, 2014 to October 26, 2014… https://www.facebook.com/historyofart2016/videos/200213034763003

The origins of Edward Hopper’s earliest oil paintings by Louis Shadwick “cuts straight through the widely held perception of Hopper as an American original,” and helps the reader understand Hopper’s artistic journey. https://burlington.org.uk/media/_file/generic/202010-42790.pdf and https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/some-edward-hoppers-earliest-works-were-copies-180975958/