1881
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Dominant colour
Venetian Glass Workers is a 1881 oil by John Singer Sargent, a American Impressionism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
You see people working in a dimly lit room, surrounded by glass beads and tools. The painting shows a quiet moment in a Venetian glass workshop. It's interesting because Sargent used his travels to study light and its effects on everyday scenes. Check out the technique of chiaroscuro to learn more about how artists use light and dark to create depth in their work.
Trained in Paris, John Singer Sargent traveled to Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy early in his career in order to study how painters such as Diego Velázquez and Frans Hals captured the effects of light and rendered figures in space. Venetian Glass Workers is one of several genre scenes featuring glass-bead workers that Sargent executed in the early 1880s. This backlit view of a shop in Venice is dark and atmospheric except for the brilliant strokes of light green and silvery white paint that describe the canes of glass as tradespeople prepare to cut them into bead-sized pieces, which will…
Friedrich Wilhelm Carl Bechstein, Berlin, by 1886. Hotel Drouot, Paris, by 1895. Charles Hovey Pepper, (Paris?), by 1896. Macbeth Gallery, New York, by 1911; Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson, Chicago, 1912; by descent to Mrs. Martn A. Ryerson, Chicago, 1932; bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1933.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Friends of American Art Loan Exhibition of American Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago , Jan. 8–28, 1914, cat. 1. Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the Late John Singer Sargent , Nov. 3–Dec. 27, 1925, cat. 14. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress , June 1–Nov. 1, 1933, cat. 480. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress , June 1–Nov. 1, 1934, cat. 411. Appleton, WI, Lawrence College, New Alexander Gymnasium, Loan Exhibition of American Paintings at Lawrence College , Sept. 22–Oct. 4, 1937, cat. 6. San…
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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