1891
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Life Study (Study of an Egyptian Girl) is a 1891 oil by John Singer Sargent, a American Impressionism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
You see a woman standing in a complicated pose, with her weight on one foot and her upper body twisted to the side. She's dressed in traditional clothing, and her face is calm. The artist took time to study her posture and expression, which makes this painting interesting. The woman's identity is unknown, but we know she posed in Cairo. The artist traveled to Egypt for inspiration and to find new subjects to paint. You can learn more about the artist's use of light and shadow by looking into the technique of chiaroscuro.
John Singer Sargent traveled to Egypt in 1891 in search of source material for a mural commission for the Boston Public Library. Like many 19th-century Western European artists, he was drawn to the Middle East by the region’s perceived exoticism and its ancient histories. The identity of the woman who posed in Cairo for this full-length figure study is not known. She assumes a complicated posture, placing her weight on her right foot while twisting her upper body to the left. Instead of using the bravura painterly style of swift, visible brushstrokes that characterizes his society portraits,…
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture , May 23–Oct. 31, 1933, cat. 477, as Nude Study of an Egyptian Girl . Art Institute of Chicago, John Singer Sargent and Chicago’s Gilded Age , July 1–Sept. 30, 2018, cat. 24.
Robert B. Harshe, Catalogue of a Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, Lent from American Collections , exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1933), 64, cat. 477, as Nude Study of an Egyptian Girl . Annelise K. Madsen, et al., John Singer Sargent and Chicago's Gilded Age , exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 2018), 16, 27–28, 53, 95, 129, 204, 208, cat. 24, fig. 7 (ill.).
Read the full account in the museum source.
John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 15, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Belle Époque and Edwardian-era luxury.
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