The Master and His Pupils
John Singer Sargent
(American, 1856–1925)
1914
Medium/TechniqueOil on canvas
Dimensions55.88 x 71.12 cm (22 x 28 in.)
Credit LineThe Hayden Collection—Charles Henry Hayden Fund
Accession number22.592
On View
On viewClassificationsPaintings
Collections
Sargent painted this forest hillside when he was stranded in the Austrian Tyrol after the outbreak of World War I. He depicts one of his traveling companions, British landscape painter Adrian Stokes, surrounded by three women, the pupils of the title (Stokes’s maid posed for all three of the female figures). The rocky foreground occupies more than half the canvas and almost seems to be the real subject of the picture. But the title returns the focus to the figures, slyly raising the question of who is the master—Stokes or Sargent?
ProvenanceJanuary, 1915, sold by the artist to Knoedler and Co., London and New York for £200 (stock no. 13653); April 4, 1916, sold by Knoedler, New York, to Arthur Hudson Marks (b. 1874 - d. 1939), Akron, OH, for $6000 [see note]. 1922, sold by Copley Gallery, Boston, to the MFA for $9,500. (Accession Date: May 18, 1922)NOTE: Getty Provenance Index, M. Knoedler and Co. records, PI-Record no. K-21145 (stock book 6, no. 13653, p. 107).
John Singer Sargent
1921
