Spanish Landscape 1879 - 1880

John Singer Sargent painted this impressionistic Spanish landscape, though we don't know exactly when. It's interesting that he chose this particular view. Sargent was an American artist, but he spent much of his life in Europe. He often painted portraits of the wealthy and powerful, and those works reflect the values and tastes of that elite social class. Here, though, the landscape seems almost ordinary. Instead of a grand vista, we have a rather muted palette, and the scene suggests a quiet, rural world. Was Sargent, perhaps, looking for a different kind of subject matter, away from the social expectations of his portrait commissions? It's through the close study of his complete oeuvre, along with letters, diaries, and other documents, that we can understand how this landscape fits into Sargent's career, and the broader social and institutional contexts that shaped his work.