John Singer Sargent, an American among the Impressionists, and his belated fame

I'd rather lie abed a little longer than face all this...

Punting under the Willows (1887) and Siesta (1907) by the American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).

Sargent moved among the Impressionists, and this seems to have left a mark on his work. American by birth, he spent many years in Europe and travelling around the world. He drew inspiration from the great Dutch masters, yet was friends with Claude Monet, Carolus-Duran and Paul Helleu. Despite high esteem from his colleagues (Rodin, for instance, joked that Sargent was the Van Dyck of his age, while Pissarro, on the contrary, criticised him), the American for some reason remained to the end of his days a painter not greatly in demand. Though to my mind he is a rather interesting artist. Recognition and success came to him thirty years after his death, when he was even counted a classic of American national art.

Portraits of women are one of the main lines of Sargent's work, and in 2003 New York saw the highly successful exhibition "John Singer Sargent's Women", where these pictures were also shown.