Yours Sincerely, John S. Sargent

Today, we visited Boston's Museum of Fine Arts to see the exhibit "Yours Sincerely, John S. Sargent" -- a fascinating collection of photographs, paintings, and letters by and about the famous American artist John Singer Sargent.  The exhibition celebrates the recent gift to the museum of the John Singer Sargent Archive.

Here you can see a delightful caricature of the painter by his friend Henry Tonks.  Painted in Belgium in 1918 .  The description next to this piece states:  "Sargent's kit as an artist during WWI was minimal -- a small collapsible easel, a tin of watercolors, and a painter's umbrella to reflect and control the light.  According to the New York Times, 'the area near Ypres in Belgium was a valley of shell holes and mud.  Then like a giant mushroom springing unheralded overnight out of the mud and mire of things, there appeared a huge white umbrella -- just an inoffensive, sit-by-the-sea green and white umbrella.'  The umbrella was Sargent's, and in this tongue-in-cheek portrait, Tonks provides it with appropriate camouflage for this devastated place, where airplanes circle overhead ..."

The letter is from Sargent, written in French, to his good friend Claude Monet.

There were quite a few letters in the exhibition ... How I wish I had had the foresight to bring my reading glasses with me!