| El Jaleo | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | John Singer Sargent |
| Year | 1882 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 237 cm× 352 cm(93 in× 138 in) |
| Location | Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston |
El Jaleo is a large painting by John Singer Sargent, depicting a Spanish Romani dancer performing to the accompaniment of musicians. Painted in 1882, it currently hangs in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in Boston.
The painting was inspired by a five-month trip Sargent made through Spain and North Africa in 1879, which also yielded a smaller oil painting, The Spanish Dance (Hispanic Society of America). [1] [2] Chronologically and thematically the painting is related to a series of works Sargent painted during a subsequent stay in Venice. These too include dramatic light effects, exotic models and restrained coloring. [3] Impressed by the costumes and theatrical manner of Romani dance, the painter returned to Paris and began work on a large canvas whose scale suggested a performing stage. [4] The name El Jaleo refers to both the broad meaning of jaleo, a ruckus, as well as the specific dance known as jaleo de jerez. [4] [5]
Sargent planned the composition of El Jaleo for at least a year. [3] The painting was preceded by a series of preliminary studies, focusing particularly on the dancer's stylized posture. The result of thorough preparation, El Jaleo is characterized by an assured and rapid handling, and may have been completed in no more than a few days. [3]
Almost 12 feet (3.7 m) wide, El Jaleo is broadly painted in a nearly monochromatic palette, but for spots of red at the right and an orange at left, which is reminiscent of the lemons Édouard Manet inserted into several of his large paintings. [7] At odds with the academic practice of carefully modulated tones, Sargent dramatized the contrast between rich blacks and the shining white skirt of the dancer, caught in the strong footlights and painted briskly so as to suggest movement. [8] The lighting also creates long and eerie shadows on the rear wall that comprises nearly half the painting.
The female dancer, leaning asymmetrically, is placed to imply forward motion, from left to right across the canvas. [5] She is wearing a large, embroidered shawl wrapped around her shoulders, illustrating common flamenco costuming. [9] The dancer's pose, with the outstretched left arm, is a depiction of standard flamenco dance technique and style. [9]
El Jaleo is the most theatrical of Sargent's early major works. [10] The lack of a barrier between the viewer and dancer helps create the illusion that we are present at the actual event; the manipulation of space and lighting communicates the energetic rhythms of the dance, its sound and movement. [10]
El Jaleo is an example of Hispanism, the phenomenon of widespread fascination with Spanish culture throughout Europe and America in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. [9]
The painting has been called both an example of John Singer Sargent's Impressionism [11] and also his early affinity with the Realist movement. [12]
A brief shot in the 1960 movie The Alamo re-creates the scene portrayed in El Jaleo, in fulfillment of a promise to do so that actor John Wayne, who directed it, had given movie executive Spyros Skouras. [13]
Sargent exhibited El Jaleo at the 1882 Paris Salon, where the painting was purchased by a Boston patron, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge. [4] It was the last subject picture that Sargent exhibited at the Salon, and his greatest success there. [3]
In 1888 the painting was publicly exhibited in Boston, at which time museum patron Isabella Stewart Gardner, the heiress wife of a Coolidge cousin, expressed her interest in it. [4] In 1914 she borrowed El Jaleo to exhibit in her museum, and constructed the Spanish Cloister gallery especially for El Jaleo, which is framed by a Moorish arch [14] [15] and reflected the painting in a large mirror running perpendicular to its left edge. Coolidge then gave the painting to Gardner, and Sargent presented her with an album of pencil drawings he had made as preparatory sketches for the work. [4]
El Jaleo was on exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. for a short time in 1992, on loan from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for the first time since 1914. At that time, the painting had been recently cleaned and restored by Alain Goldrach. [16]
After the initial exhibition of El Jaleo in 1882 at the French Salon, John Singer Sargent became, as one writer put it, "the most talked-about painter in Paris." [17] [18] Some critics in 1882 said that the painting caused Sargent to join the ranks of the French Impressionists. [19] A critic for Le Figaro called the painting "one of the most original and strongest works of the present Salon." [20] Some writers hailed the painting as clever, while others dismissed it as a vagary of the artist. [21]
John Singer Sargent was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, Spain, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. It was founded by Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose will called for her art collection to be permanently exhibited "for the education and enjoyment of the public forever."
Madame X or Portrait of Madame X is a portrait painting by John Singer Sargent of a young socialite, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, wife of the French banker Pierre Gautreau. Madame X was painted not as a commission, but at the request of Sargent. It is a study in opposition. Sargent shows a woman posing in a black satin dress with jeweled straps, a dress that reveals and hides at the same time. The portrait is characterized by the pale flesh tone of the subject contrasted against a dark-colored dress and background.
Isabella Stewart Gardner was an American art collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. She founded the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit is a painting by the American artist John Singer Sargent. The painting depicts four young girls, the daughters of Edward Darley Boit, in their family's Paris apartment. It was painted in 1882 and is now exhibited in the new Art of the Americas Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting hangs between the two tall blue-and-white Japanese vases depicted in the work, which were donated by the heirs of the Boit family.
Rosina Ferrara (1861–1934) was an Italian artist's model from the island of Capri, who became the favorite muse of American expatriate artist John Singer Sargent. Captivated by her exotic beauty, a variety of 19th-century artists, including Charles Sprague Pearce, Frank Hyde, and George Randolph Barse, made works of art of her. Ferrara was featured in the 2003 art exhibit "Sargent's Women" at New York City's Adelson Galleries, as well as in the book Sargent's Women published that year.
The Palazzi Barbaro—also known as Palazzo Barbaro, Ca' Barbaro, and Palazzo Barbaro-Curtis—are a pair of adjoining palaces, in the San Marco district of Venice, northern Italy. They were formerly one of the homes of the patrician Barbaro family. The Palazzi are located on the Grand Canal of Venice, next to the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti and not far from the Ponte dell'Accademia. The buildings are also known as the Palazzo Barbaro-Curtis. It is one of the least altered of the Gothic palaces of Venice.
Dennis Miller Bunker was an American painter and innovator of American Impressionism. His mature works include both brightly colored landscape paintings and dark, finely drawn portraits and figures. One of the major American painters of the late 19th century, and a friend of many prominent artists of the era, Bunker died from meningitis at the age of 29.
Street in Venice is a c. 1882 oil on wood painting by the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925). Painted in an impressionist manner, it is set in a quiet backstreet off the Calle Larga dei Proverbi, near the Grand Canal in Venice. The painting shows a young woman walking along the flagstones, kicking her skirt with her right foot, and observed by two men in the shadows to her left. From the manner in which Sargent depicts her down-turned eyes and seemingly fast pace with which she passes the two men, he is concerned largely with the invasive male glare and its effect on the passing woman.
The Misses Vickers is an oil painting by John Singer Sargent. The painting depicts three young ladies, from the Vickers family, in their estate in Bolsover Hill, Sheffield, England.
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose is an oil-on-canvas painting made by the American painter John Singer Sargent in 1885–86.
Mrs. Fiske Warren and Her Daughter Rachel is a 1903 oil on canvas portrait painting by American portrait painter John Singer Sargent of Gretchen Osgood Warren, an American actress, singer, and poet, and her daughter Rachel Warren. The painting measures at 152.4 × 102.55 cm (60.0 × 40.4 in) and is exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. The museum acquired it on 13 May 1964.
Warren Adelson is an American art dealer, art historian, and author specializing in 19th and 20th-century American Painting as well as contemporary art.
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw is an oil on canvas portrait painting of Gertrude Agnew, the wife of Sir Andrew Agnew, 9th Baronet. The painting was commissioned in 1892 and completed the same year by the American portrait artist John Singer Sargent. It measures 127 × 101 cm (50.0 × 39.8 in) and is owned by the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland. The museum acquired it through the Cowan Smith Bequest Fund in 1925.
A jaleo is an Andalusian song genre, and clapping applause in flamenco.
Ralph Wormeley Curtis was an American painter and graphic artist in the Impressionist style. He spent most of his life in Europe, where he was a close associate of his distant cousin, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler. He painted in a variety of genres, but was known mostly for landscapes and urban scenes; especially of Venice.
Thomas Jefferson Coolidge was a U.S. ambassador and a leading Boston businessman.
Lady with the Rose (Charlotte Louise Burckhardt) is an 1882 painting by John Singer Sargent. It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children is an 1878 oil on canvas painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It depicts Marguerite Charpentier, a French salonist, art collector, and advocate of the Impressionists, and her children Georgette and Paul. The painting is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.