Tarragona

Artist John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925)

Datec. 1908

MediumWatercolor, gouache and graphite on paper mounted on board

Dimensions19 1/2 x 13 7/8 in. (49.5 x 35.3 cm)
Sheet Dimension: 19 1/2 x 13 7/8

ClassificationsWatercolor

Credit LineGrace Judd Landers Fund

Terms

Object number1944.02

Description"Tarragona", which depicts a section of the west portal of Tarragona Cathedral, displays Sargent's life long interest in architecture and architectural decoration.(1) Beginning in 1893, with a commission from the Boston Public Library to create a series of murals depicting the history of religion, the problems of architectural space and ornament acquired new importance in Sargent's work. As he traveled through Italy, the Near East, and Spain in quest of material for his project, Sargent paid particular attention to the ways in which artists and architects of the past had solved the problems of two- and three-dimensional design in ecclesiastical buildings. Works such as "Tarragona" provided Sargent with an encyclopedia of visual material to which he could refer during his twenty-three year mural project.
Although these architectural images had a functional role, watercolors such as "Tarragona" also reveal Sargent's sheer delight in painting and are objects of beauty in their own right. Particularly after 1900, as Sargent increasingly abandoned portraiture in favor of informal landscape and figure painting, watercolor became a valued means of expression for him. In "Tarragona", Sargent employed a monochromatic palette of brown, with subtle accents of violet, blue, green, yellow, and orange. He almost completely covered the sheet with pigment, first sketching the structural lines of the edifice in pencil, then applying thin washes of watercolor, reinforcing the architectural details of the facade with strokes of thicker, more concentrated paint. He suggested shadows in rich sienna and added highlights, such as those found on the face of the second figure from left, in a daring complement of violet and green.
Sargent's composition is equally bold. Vertical lines predominate, from the elegant buttress arcade and elongated sculptures of prophets and apostles in the bottom and middle sections of the painting to the pointed Gothic canopy at the top. The statue in the centermost jamb is exactly in the middle of the composition, strengthening geometry of the image. Sargent's reliance on photography for such compositional arrangements is confirmed by his ownership of a contemporary photograph by Jean Laurent taken from a similar point of view.(2) As in the photograph, Sargent cropped the cathedral's ornamented facade, focusing exclusively on one of the massive buttresses that frames the central doorway and omitting the tympanum and rose window that crown the gigantic iron-mounted doors.
The cathedral of Tarragona was consecrated in 1331, and the architecutral sculpture on the west facade, begun by Barthélemy le Normand, was completed by Jaime Cascalls de Zaragoza in 1375.(3) Tarragona, in the northeastern region of Spanish Catalonia, is picturesquely located on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Originally a Carthaginian fortress, the city gained some importance during the Roman occupation of Spain but was sacked repeatedly during the next 1,500 years and remains a provincial port to this day. Sargent probably visited Tarragona in 1908, when the principal export was wine and the population stood at 23,400.(4) Tarragona is only sixty miles south of Barcelona, the most popular embarcation point for Majorca, and Sargent traveled to this Spanish island twice, during summer and fall 1908. Aside from this view of the cathedral's western facade, Sargent also painted a view of the building's thirteenth-century cloister (private collection) and a detail of its fifteenth-century "retablo" (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) during a quick sidetrip to the city.
Sargent exhibited "Tarragona" and two other works from his Spanish trip, "In Majorca" and "Flotsam and Jetsam" (both private collection), at the annual exhibition of the Royal Water-Colour Society in London in winter 1908. He kept many of his watercolors for friends and for his own collection until 1909, when he agreed to allow M. Knoedler, New York, to exhibit eighty-six of them. The Brooklyn Museum promptly purchased eighty-three, including "Tarragona", thus initiating the practice of major American museums of acquiring large groups of watercolors for their collection. In 1926, shortly after Sargent's death, when the market for his watercolors was especially strong, the Brooklyn Museum returned "Tarragona" along with approximately thirty other works to Knoedler, and the New Britian Institute purchased the painting in 1944.(5)

MEB
NOTES:
1. Kate Rubin and Elizabeth Oustinoff kindly provided me with their preliminary research on this work.
2. The photograph is preserved in a scrapbook in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 50.130.154a-pp.
3. Ian Robertson, "Blue Guide: Spain" (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), pp. 421-22.
4. Karl Baedeker, "Spain and Portugal: Handbook for Travellers" (London: Dulau, 1908), pp. 263-64.
5. Correspondence from M. Knoedler and Lo., July 6, 1994, NBMAA curatorial files. See also Annette Blaugrund, "`Sunshine Captured': The Development and Dispersement of Sargent's Watercolors," in Patricia Hills et al., "John Singer Sargent", exhib. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1986), pp. 224, 246-47 nn. 34-35.

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