Today’s Painting
今日画作
In 1878, Sargent traveled to the Italian island of Capri in search of exotic scenery to use in his subject pictures. Many of the works he produced there feature the popular local model, Rosina Ferrara, who was admired for her blue-black hair and olive skin. In A Capriote, Sargent painted Ferrara in an olive grove, with her arms twined around a tree, echoing its twisted shape. By using this contrived pose and depicting her striking features in profile, Sargent made his model seem to be an elemental part of the wild Capri landscape.
1878年，萨金特为其主题画作前往意大利卡普里岛寻找异国风光。他在那里创作的许多作品主角都是当地受欢迎的模特罗西娜·费拉拉，她蓝黑色的头发和橄榄色的皮肤让人欣赏不已。在《一位卡普里岛人》中，萨金特描画了在橄榄树丛中的费拉拉，她双臂缠绕在树上，与树枝扭曲的形状相呼应。通过使用这种精心设计的姿势并描绘出她动人的侧面，萨金特似乎使他的模特成为卡普里岛野生景观里基本的组成部分。
Artist Introduction
画家简介
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings.
约翰·辛格·萨金特是一位美国画家，因其对爱德华时代奢华的追求而被誉为“他这一代领先的肖像画家”。在他的职业生涯中，他创作了大约900幅油画和2,000多种水彩画，以及无数的素描和木炭素描。
His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. His parents were American, but he was trained in Paris prior to moving to London. Sargent enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter, although not without controversy and some critical reservation; an early submission to the Paris Salon, his "Portrait of Madame X", was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter, but it resulted in scandal instead.
他全部的作品记录了从威尼斯到蒂罗尔州，科孚岛，中东，蒙大拿州，缅因州和佛罗里达州的环球旅行。他的父母是美国人，但他在移居伦敦之前，曾在巴黎接受过培训。萨金特作为肖像画家获得了国际赞誉，尽管他并非没有争议或遇到一些批判性的保留意见。他早期的作品《X夫人的肖像》曾提交给巴黎沙龙，本想借此巩固他作为社会画家的地位，但结果却引起了丑闻。
From the beginning his work was characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism.
从一开始，其画作的特点便是卓越的技巧天赋，尤其是他运用画笔的能力，这在之后几年引起了人们的钦佩，同时也激起了人们对所谓肤浅的批评。他受委托创作的作品与宏伟的肖像画风格保持一致，而他的非正式研究和山水画则表现出与印象派相近。
In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. He lived most of his life in Europe. Art historians generally ignored the society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.
在后来的生活中，萨金特对正式肖像作品的局限性表现出矛盾心理，并把他的大部分精力都投入到壁画和绘画上。他一生大部分时间都在欧洲生活。在20世纪后期之前，艺术史学家通常忽视诸如萨金特这样的社会艺术家。
In a time when the art world focused, in turn, on Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism, Sargent practiced his own form of Realism, which made brilliant references to Velázquez, Van Dyck, and Gainsborough. His seemingly effortless facility for paraphrasing the masters in a contemporary fashion led to a stream of commissioned portraits of remarkable virtuosity.
在艺术界又将重点放在印象派，野兽派和立体派的时代，萨金特践行了他自己的现实主义形式，这很好地参考了维拉斯克斯，范·戴克和盖恩斯伯勒。他借用看似毫不费力的天赋以当代方式诠释了大师们的作品，从而产生了一系列精湛技艺的委托画像。
Still, during his life his work engendered negative responses from some of his colleagues: Camille Pissarro wrote "he is not an enthusiast but rather an adroit performer," and Walter Sickert published a satirical turn under the heading "Sargentolatry." By the time of his death he was dismissed as an anachronism, a relic of the Gilded Age and out of step with the artistic sentiments of post-World War I Europe.
尽管如此，在他的一生中，他的画作还是引起了一些同事的负面反应：卡米尔·毕沙罗写道：“他不是一个狂热者，而是一个精明的表演者”，而沃尔特·西格特在“萨金特勒”的标题下发表了讽刺性的转折。到他去世时，他已被摒弃，被视为过时，镀金时代的遗物，以及和第一次世界大战后的欧洲艺术情感脱节。
Elizabeth Prettejohn suggests that the decline of Sargent's reputation was due partly to the rise of anti-Semitism, and the resultant intolerance of 'celebrations of Jewish prosperity.' It has been suggested that the exotic qualities inherent in his work appealed to the sympathies of the Jewish clients whom he painted from the 1890s on.
伊丽莎白·普雷特约翰表示，萨金特声誉下滑，部分是由于反犹太主义的兴起，导致无法容忍“庆祝犹太人繁荣”。有人提出，他作品里固有的异国情调吸引到了犹太客户的同情，而从1890年代开始，他便一直为他们作画。
Nowhere is this more apparent than in his portrait "Almina, Daughter of Asher Wertheimer" (1908), in which the subject is seen wearing a Persian costume, a pearl encrusted turban, and strumming an Indian tambura, accoutrements all meant to convey sensuality and mystery.
这一点在他的肖像画《阿尔敏，阿舍·韦特海默的女儿》（1908年）中体现得最为明显。在该肖像画中，主角穿着波斯服装，珍珠缠着的头巾，弹奏着印度的坦布拉琴，这些行头都是为了传达性感和神秘。
If Sargent used this portrait to explore issues of sexuality and identity, it seems to have met with the satisfaction of the subject's father, Asher Wertheimer, a wealthy Jewish art dealer. Foremost of Sargent's detractors was the influential English art critic Roger Fry, of the Bloomsbury Group, who at the 1926 Sargent retrospective in London dismissed Sargent's work as lacking aesthetic quality: "Wonderful indeed, but most wonderful that this wonderful performance should ever have been confused with that of an artist."
如果萨金特用这幅肖像来探索性别和身份问题，似乎已经满足了该主角父亲的要求，他叫阿舍·韦特海默，是一个富有的犹太艺术品经销商。萨金特的主要批评者是布鲁姆斯伯里集团有影响力的英国艺术评论家罗杰·弗莱，他在1926年伦敦萨金特回顾展上贬低萨金特的作品缺乏美学品质：“确实很棒，但最奇妙的是，这种奇妙的表演竟然与艺术家的作品混淆在一起。”
And, in the 1930s, Lewis Mumford led a chorus of the severest critics: "Sargent remained to the end an illustrator ... the most adroit appearance of workmanship, the most dashing eye for effect, cannot conceal the essential emptiness of Sargent's mind, or the contemptuous and cynical superficiality of a certain part of his execution."
而且，在1930年代，刘易斯·芒福德率先发出了一连串最严厉的批评：“萨根特直到最后还是一位插画家...展现出来的最精湛的技艺，最时髦的追求轰动的眼光，这些都掩盖不了萨金特思想上虚无的本质，以及对他这类艺术表演的轻蔑和愤世嫉俗的肤浅。”
Part of Sargent's devaluation is also attributed to his expatriate life, which made him seem less American at a time when "authentic" socially conscious American art, as exemplified by the Stieglitz circle and by the Ashcan School, was on the ascent. After such a long period of critical disfavor, Sargent's reputation has increased steadily since the 1950s.
萨金特名誉下降的部分原因还在于他移居国外的生活，这使他看起来没有那么的美国人。而在那时，真正有社会意识的美国艺术，如斯蒂格里茨圈子和阿什坎派一样，正处于上升期。经过如此长时间的严峻批评之后，自1950年代以来，萨金特的声誉一直在稳定增长。
In the 1960s, a revival of Victorian art and new scholarship directed at Sargent strengthened his reputation. Sargent has been the subject of large-scale exhibitions in major museums, including a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1986, and a 1999 "blockbuster" traveling show that exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art Washington, and the National Gallery, London.
1960年代，维多利亚艺术的复兴和指向萨金特的新奖学金改善了他的声誉。萨金特一直是各大博物馆大型展览的对象，其中包括1986年在惠特尼美国艺术博物馆的回顾展，以及1999年在波士顿美术馆，华盛顿国家美术馆和伦敦国家美术馆展出的1999年“大片”旅行展。
Vocabulary
单词解析
evocation
英 [ˌiːvəʊˈkeɪʃn] 美 [ˌiːvoʊˈkeɪʃn]
n.
唤起;引起;再现
oeuvre
英 [ˈɜːvrə] 美 [ˈɜːvrə]
n.
(作家、艺术家等的)全部作品
scandal
英 [ˈskændl] 美 [ˈskændl]
n.
丑行;使人震惊的丑事;丑闻;关于丑行的传言(或报道)
landscape
英 [ˈlændskeɪp] 美 [ˈlændskeɪp]
n.
(陆上，尤指乡村的)风景，景色;乡村风景画
ambivalence
n.
矛盾心理
engender
英 [ɪnˈdʒendə(r)] 美 [ɪnˈdʒendər]
v.
产生，引起
adroit
英 [əˈdrɔɪt] 美 [əˈdrɔɪt]
adj.
(尤指待人接物)精明的，干练的，机敏的
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