... Today, Sargent's portraits are looked on as a valuable chronicle of the past. John Singer Sargent was born in Florence in 1856. His parents were Americans who had moved to Italy for a temporary stay that became permanent. In fact, Sargent did not see America until he was twenty years old. When he was very young his artistic talent became evident, and the family moved to Paris so that he could attend art school when he was eighteen. Sargent had rapid success in the Paris art world. By the age of twenty-five, he had already won a second class medal in the prestigious Salon. Henry James, famous writer of the time and friend of Sargent described his work as generating "the slightly 'uncanny' spectacle of a talent which on the very threshold of its career has nothing more to learn." (Meisler 69) Three years later Sargent's success in the Paris ...

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