| Tommies Bathing | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | John Singer Sargent  |
| Year | 1918 |
| Dimensions | 34.6 cm (13.6 in) × 53.2 cm (20.9 in) |
| Location | Metropolitan Museum of Art |
| Accession No. | 50.130.58 |
| Identifiers | The Met object ID: 12440 |
Tommies Bathing is a 1918 watercolor painting by John Singer Sargent. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York. [1]
Sargent painted Tommies Bathing in the summer of 1918. The British government had commissioned him for a painting that would commemorate the efforts of the Americans and British in World War I, so he traveled to the front in the valley of the Somme to find a subject. During this time, he painted some informal watercolors, including Tommies Bathing. The name "Tommy" comes from "Thomas Atkins," the fictitious name the British Army used on official forms for private soldiers. [2]
The watercolor was a gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1950 from Mrs. Francis Ormond, Sargent's sister. [2]
The work depicts soldiers bathing, resting, and sleeping or napping, implying a narrative from the bathing soldier, to the soldier drying himself in the sunlight, to the partially dressed soldier. [3] Sargent used a high, voyeuristic viewpoint and shows the men in a state of complete relaxation. He also captured the shadows cast across the bodies by blades of grass, with technical facility. [4]
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.
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.
The Grand Central Art Galleries were the exhibition and administrative space of the nonprofit Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, and others. Artists closely associated with the Grand Central Art Galleries included Hovsep Pushman, George de Forest Brush, and especially Sargent, whose posthumous show took place there in 1928.
Gassed is a very large oil painting completed in March 1919 by John Singer Sargent. It depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack during the First World War, with a line of wounded soldiers walking towards a dressing station. Sargent was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to document the war and visited the Western Front in July 1918 spending time with the Guards Division near Arras, and then with the American Expeditionary Forces near Ypres. The painting was finished in March 1919 and voted picture of the year by the Royal Academy of Arts in 1919. It is now held by the Imperial War Museum. It visited the US in 1999 for a series of retrospective exhibitions, and then from 2016 to 2018 for exhibitions commemorating the centenary of the First World War.
Lucia Fairchild Fuller was an American painter and member of the New Hampshire Cornish Art Colony. She was inspired to pursue art by John Singer Sargent. Fuller created a mural entitled TheWomen of Plymouth for the Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Best known for her portrait miniatures, she was a founding member and treasurer of the American Society of Miniature Painters.
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.
The Wyndham Sisters: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane, and Mrs. Tennant is an 1899 painting by John Singer Sargent. It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting was hailed by the critics and dubbed “The Three Graces” by the Prince of Wales.
Egyptians Raising Water from the Nile is an 1890–1891 painting by John Singer Sargent. It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, United States.
Arab Woman is a watercolor painting by American artist John Singer Sargent, created c. 1905-1906. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.
A Basket of Clams is a mid-19th century watercolor by American artist Winslow Homer in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
The Mouth of a Cave is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Hubert Robert, created in 1784. The painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.
Mountain Stream is an early 20th century watercolor drawing by the American artist John Singer Sargent. Done in watercolor and graphite pencil on wove paper, the work depicts a nude figure by a dazzling mountain stream. Sargent's work was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remains, as part of the bequest of Joseph Pulitzer in 1915.
Egyptian Woman with Earrings is a late 19th-century painting by American artist John Singer Sargent. Done in oil on canvas, the work portrays an Egyptian woman. The painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Mira Edgerly-Korzybska, also known as Myra Edgerly and Countess de Korzybska, was an American painter. She specialized in miniature portraits on ivory, though her "miniatures" tended to be larger than average.
Mountain with Red House is a watercolor landscape painting created ca. 1913 by the American artist Charles Demuth. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the New York.
Splendid Mountain Watercolours or Splendid Mountain Sketchbook is a collection of sketches and watercolors by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), executed when he was fourteen years old, and on a summer excursion to Switzerland's Bernese Alps in the Berner Oberland in 1870. The sketchbook contains 60 leaves, including 14 watercolors and 47 crayon or graphite studies of the mountains, landscapes and people he encountered while traveling with his family.
Dr Pozzi at Home is an 1881 oil painting by the American artist John Singer Sargent. The portrait of the French gynaecologist and art collector Samuel Jean de Pozzi was Sargent's first large portrait of a male subject: it measures 201.6 cm × 102.2 cm. It was the first work that Sargent exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. It was acquired by Armand Hammer in 1967, and has been held by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles since 1991.
Avel de Knight (1923-1995) was an African-American artist, art educator, and art critic. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the University of Richmond Museums.
Graham Nickson is a British artist known for large-scale figurative paintings and drawings. He was born in Knowle Green, United Kingdom. He has lived in New York City since 1976 and he has been Dean of the New York Studio School since 1988, where he developed a "Drawing Marathon," a two-week program of intensive study. Nickson works in oils, acrylics, charcoal, and watercolor.