CHRIS FREMANTLE

John Singer Sargent watercolours at the Museum of Fine Art Houston.  I went with Donna Glassford.

The quarries at Cararra, Bedouin in the middle east, harbours around the Mediterranean, Venice, gardens in Firenze, vagrants and other artists, Tommies at the end of the war.

Sargent was an outstanding society painter, but this exhibition of watercolours is so much more inspiring. Watercolour is a particular skill and you will never see better, but there is a fascinating compositinal judgement – a harbour seen through a row of trees, the underside of the Rialto.

Also interesting that this exhibition is of works held by the MFA Boston and Brooklyn Museum. It represents the work shown in two shows at Sargent’s New York dealer (1909 and 1912) which were both bought ‘in toto’ by the then Brooklyn Museum Director.