The Patio (1908): Art, History and Details

The Patio (1908) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John Singer Sargent (American, born Italy, 1856–1925).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Sargent was born in Italy, studied in France, and worked chiefly in England, but he never renounced his American citizenship. As a young man, Sargent achieved fame and wealth as a portraitist, but he gradually tired of painting wealthy, superficial aristocrats. In his later years he focused increasingly on watercolor. Along with Winslow Homer, Sargent was the major artist to develop a spontaneous approach toward watercolor. Rather than carefully layering his pigments, he dashed off his paintings in a single sitting, allowing the colors to freely blend together.

Object facts

• Title: The Patio
• Date: 1908
• Creator attribution: John Singer Sargent (American, born Italy, 1856–1925)
• Culture: America, late 19th-early 20th Century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor with traces of gouache over graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 53.2 x 34.6 cm (20 15/16 x 13 5/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - American 19th Century
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1946.293

Collection credit

In memory of Ralph King, gift of Mrs. Ralph King; Ralph T. Woods, Charles G. King; and Frances King Schafer

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William M. “Gift in Memory of Ralph King.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 34, no. 2 (February 1947): 22–27.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.