Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Sargent's reputation is often defined by his remarkable achievements as a painter of sophisticated society portraits. However, as this innovative examination of his career reveals, he created a significant number of childrens portraits and genre paintings featuring children. The title of the book makes ironic reference to Charles Dickens's famous novel Great Expectations, and is used here to suggest how Sargents paintings of children related to the expectations associated with representations of childhood in the art and literature of Sargents day. The book also traces how Sargent ultimately advanced childhood as an artistic subject. The book contains five essays by three notable curators and professors of fine arts, is illustrated with Sargents truly stunning and often lesser-known paintings of children, and includes Sargent family photographs, some of which are previously unpublished.
About the Author
Barbara Dayer Gallati is Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum and is on the art history faculty of the School of Visual Arts, New York.
Erica E. Hirshler is Croll Senior Curator of Paintings in the Department of the Art of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Richard Ormond, a great-nephew of John Singer Sargent, is director of the John Singer Sargent Catalogue Raisonné Project and the principal authority in Sargent Studies.