Derelicts

Artist/Culture John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925)

Date1917

Mediumwatercolor, with rewetting, blotting, and scraping out, over graphite on medium thick, textured, cream wove paper

Dimensionssheet: 34.7 × 53.4 cm (13 11/16 × 21 in.)

ClassificationsWatercolors

Credit LineSustaining Membership Fund

Object number1917.87

Label TextFor Sargent, watercolor served as a respite from his portrait commissions, yielding drawings with technical complexity and spontaneity. The melancholy subject of Derelicts is an outlier relative to the other work he made during his 1917 visit to Florida. Former WAM curator Susan Strickler theorizes that these broken-down, impotent boats may be a metaphor for the ongoing war in Europe, a concern he voiced in letters written during the same trip. This evocative drawing demonstrates several difficult yet effortlessly executed watercolor techniques. Texture is added by using a waxy crayon to create a resist in the foliage behind the boat. Scraped-out paint in the scrubby brush reveals twisting stems and branches.ProvenanceThe artist;

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