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The rapid sketchy brushstrokes in this work reflect the artist’s impressionist style.

This canvas shows a picnic with Sargent’s traveling companions in the background.

The Olive Grove was probably painted on the Greek isle of Corfu during one of Sargent’s trips to the Mediterranean.

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John Singer Sargent

The Olive Grove, 1910

oil on canvas

22 1/8 x 28 ¾ in.

Gift of Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York

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John Singer Sargent won fame and fortune as a portrait painter.  But by 1907 he grew tired of painting society portraits that required he flatter his sitters.  He even complained that he had to talk to them while they sat, feigning interest in their conversation.  He turned from painting people to painting landscapes, following the American landscape tradition begun by the Hudson River School.  Sargent began a tour capturing the scenes he saw on his canvases.  He took regular trips to the Mediterranean islands, the Alps, and Italy, painting what he saw with the bold brushwork that was at the core of his success as a portrait painter

The Olive Grove, probably set on the Greek isle of Corfu, is Sargent’s quick, impressionistic record of a picnic during one of these journeys, and the figures in the landscape are most likely his traveling companions.  Painting out of doors was common for Sargent, and in its brushwork and informality this canvas shows some elements of impressionism he had absorbed in France during the 1870s.

Reference

Edmund Swinglehurst, John Singer Sargent.  John Singer Sargent, California: Thunder Bay Press, 2001. ISBN-13: 978-1571452702