Francisco Bernareggi

Artist John Singer Sargent (American, 1856 - 1925)

Dateca. 1908

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 26 13/16 x 19 5/16 inches (68.1 x 49.05 cm)
Framed: 37 3/4 x 31 1/8 x 3 1/2 inches (95.89 x 79.06 x 8.89 cm)

Credit LineGift of the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation

Object numberF86-26

Signedacross top: "à M. Francisco Bernareggi, souvenir amical de / John S. Sargent"

Inscribeddated l.r.: "1907" [likely not in artist's hand]

On View

Not on view

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionA rapidly executed half-length portrait of a man wearing white. The sitter has dark hair, which is longish in front, has dark eyes, and wears a "handle-bar" moustache. He is posed with his body slightly to the left, his head is turned left also, but looks out at the viewer. The portrait's background is executed in a bravura of brush strokes in tones of ochre, beige, gray, light blue, and brown. The lower part of the canvas has an unfinished quality.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Sargent Exhibition in Japan, Yomiuri Shimbun and Japan Association of Museums, Tokyo, January 26–June 11, 1989 (traveled), no. 49.

Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends, National Portrait Gallery, London, February 12–May 25, 2015; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York June 30–October 5, 2015, no. 85.

Gallery Label

John Singer Sargent frequently painted informal portraits of fellow artists in addition to the formal portrait commissions he executed for wealthy European and American clients. Francesco Bernareggi (1878-1959) was an Argentinean painter whom Sargent met on holiday on the Spanish island of Majorca in 1908. Sargent rendered Bernareggi's attractive likeness in whipping, confident strokes, while he left the canvas' brown underpainting largely exposed at the bottom. Yellow and golden marks surrounding the Argentinean's head produce the effect that he is silhouetted by the sun and evoke Sargent's warm feelings for his colleague.

Provenance

To Francisco Bernareggi (the sitter), Majorca, Spain;

to the nephew of Francisco Bernareggi, Mendoza, Argentina, by descent, after 1959;

to (Coe Kerr Gallery, New York, 1986);

to the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation, Kansas City, Mo., 1986;

to NAMA, 1986.

Published References

Diego F. Pró, Conversaciones con Bernareggi (Buenos Aries, Argentina: Imperenta López, 1949), 151, pl. 33 (as Retrato de Bernareggi).

David McKibbin, Sargent’s Boston, with an Essay and a Biographical Summary and a Complete Check List of Sargent’s Portraits (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1956), 84.

Charles Merrill Mount, John Singer Sargent: A Biography, 2nd ed. (London: Cresset Press, 1957), 349 (as Bennareggi).

Diego F. Pró, Francisco Bernareggi (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Amancay, 1969), 226.

Donald Hoffmann, “Museum Gifts,” Kansas City Star, March 15, 1987, 6D (as Portrait of Francisco Bernareggi).

Deborah Gimelson, “American Paintings: A Market Conversation,” Art & Auction 9 (April 1987), 118.

Henry Adams, “Museum Receives Second Sargent Painting,” Calendar of Events (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), April 1987, 3 (as Portrait of Francisco Bernareggi).

Sargent Exhibition in Japan, exh. cat. (Osaka, Japan: Yomiuri Shimbun, 1989), 92, 147.

Roger Ward, “Selected Acquisitions of European and American Paintings at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 1986–1990,” Burlington Magazine 133 (February 1991), 156, 158, 158n12 (as Portrait of Francisco Bernareggi).

Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 4, 43–44, cover.

Lacey Taylor Jordon, “John Singer Sargent’s Images of Artists in an International Context,” Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1999, 322.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collections. 6^th ed. (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 243.

Michael Churchman and Scott Erbes, High Ideals and Aspirations: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 1933–1993 (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 109.

Warren Adelson et al., Sargent Abroad: Figures and Landscapes (New York: Abbeville Press, 1997), 174.

R. Crosby Kemper Jr., Banking on Art: Fifty Years of Collecting (Kansas City, Mo.: R. Crosby Kemper Jr., 2000), 26.

Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Complete Paintings, vol. 3, Late Portraits (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), xv, 206–7, 303.

Richard Ormand and Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Complete Paintings, vol. 4, Figures and Landscapes, 1874–1882 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 233n24.

Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 484–487, 2: 215–216.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 173.

Richard Ormond, Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends (New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2015), 225.

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