Thomas Colville Fine Art
19th c. American and French (Barbizon School) Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings
 

John Singer Sargent (American 1856-1925)
Egyptian Water Jars, circa 1905-06
Watercolor and pencil on paper
9 x 13 ¾ inches
Louis XIV Frame
Egyptian Water Jars is one of the forty-six exotic watercolors Sargent painted on his trip to Egypt and the Holy Land in 1905-6. In 1909, when these works were shown as the first public exhibition of his watercolors, they were received with such acclaim that the entire group was immediately acquired by the Brooklyn Museum.
Within his closely-cropped, offset composition, Sargent establishes the essential mood with a few telling, staccato touches to convey temperature, time, and geography. Wet-in-wet broad washes suggest the flowing indigo caftans and reveal the forms underneath. This closely observed record of the Bedouins, with whom Sargent stayed, captures brilliantly a part of the world little changed in a millennium.