Three Masterpieces by John Singer Sargent Are Headed to Auction

Following on the success of the blockbuster Sargent and Paris show at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and timed to the show’s move to the Musee d’Orsay this fall, Christie’s Paris is set to highlight three magnificent works from September 23—two from the artist’s time spent in Venice, and one painted in Capri when he was just 22 years old—that are steeped in history, and yet remain refreshingly modern 100 years after Sargent’s passing. The three paintings are expected to achieve $12-17 million as part of Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale during the Fall Marquee Week of sales.

Two of the paintings feature views of Venice: Corner of the Church of San Stae, Venice (est. $6-8 million) and Gondolier’s Siesta (est. $2-3 million), an exquisite watercolor and gouache on paper. Both works highlight Sargent’s reverence for the unique city, one that served as inspiration throughout his career. Once owned by the consummate collector, Henry Clay Frick, Corner of the Church of San Stae “is of only a dozen or so oil paintings of Venice from his years regularly visiting between 1898-1913,” says Tylee Abbott, Head of Department, American Art, Christie’s. “The Gondolier’s Siesta features men at rest on the Venetian Grand Canal and is a superb example of Sargent’s genius in watercolor,” says Abbott. “It’s only rivaled by the masterpiece we recently sold for a record price from the collection of Paul Allen, and it highlights the artist’s mastery of the medium and his ability to depict a figural group at the foreground of a Grand Canal vista.”

The third painting, Capri (est. $4-6 million) from 1878 depicts a fanciful rooftop scene – a departure from the artist’s more formal Paris Salon years. It very similar to a work of the same subject—Capri Girl on a Rooftop—that now hangs in the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and will feature prominently in the Musee d’Orsay exhibition this fall.

For fans of the artist, who was best known for his masterful use of light and texture, these paintings offer the chance to view subject matter that is far from the aristocratic portraiture that he was synonymous with for much of his career. As to why the fervor for John Singer Sargent now? With shows from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts to Houghton Hall in London this summer (both were focused on fashion)—not to mention a cameo in HBO’s “The Gilded Age” drama—the versatile artist is once again center stage for a diverse audience who now, more than ever, appreciates a bit of escapist glamour.