Boston Athenæum

June 11, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Learn more about this American artist by joining Karen Corsano and Daniel Williman for a discussion of their book, John Singer Sargent and His Muse: Painting Love and Loss. This sensitive and compelling biography sheds new light on John Singer Sargent’s art through an intimate history of his family, especially of his niece and muse, Rose-Marie Ormond. Between 1906 and 1912, John Singer Sargent documented the idyllic teenage summers of Rose-Marie and his own deepening affection for her serene beauty and good-hearted, candid charm. When his niece died tragically in a bombed church vault, Sargent expressed his grief on canvas: he made his last murals for the Boston Public Library a cryptic memorial to Rose-Marie and her husband, Robert. The book braids together the lives and families of Rose-Marie, Robert, and John Sargent while drawing on a rich trove of letters, diaries, journals, and the Athenæum Archive.