Did you ever wonder what it would be like to have tea with John Singer Sargent? In 1908, the American painter George de Forest Brush and his family were spending the summer in Courmayeur, a mountain town on the Swiss-Italian border of the Alps. Brush was a well-respected figurative painter in New York who had been spending the last several years working on a series of paintings depicting his wife and children, in modern costume but painted after the manner of the early Italian renaissance, and he often traveled to Italy for study and inspiration. Years ago as a young man he had studied painting in Paris at the same time as John Singer Sargent, and they became friendly there as part of the large American expatriate circle. When Sargent, always gregarious, heard that the de Forest Brush family was in Courmayeur, just a few miles from the chalet he was renting for the summer, he came to tea. George de Forest Brush's daughter Nancy was about eighteen at the time. Many years later, in the memoir she wrote about her father's life and work, she recalled this visit:
"Many years before, Papa had met John Singer Sargent in Paris, and he was staying nearby that summer. He came to tea one day, then invited my father to return his visit. But this was just before we were due to leave Courmayeur, and Papa was so busy trying to finish a painting and get packed up that he was unable to accept Mr. Sargent's invitation. However, my brother and I were delegated to have supper with him just before our departure. He was vacationing at a chalet a few miles distant, high on the side of Mont Chétif. The road was one of our favorite walks, skirting the steep side of a mountain. From here we could see the great glacial stream falling at intervals over the jutting rock on the side of Mont Blanc. At length we came to the lovely little chalet where Mr. Sargent was spending the summer with two of his friends, both well-known Italian painters. He received us in his mountain clothes, and a simple supper was served on a rough wooden table among the larch and spruce trees. A peasant woman brought tea, cheese, bread and honey, scrambled eggs, and fruit. The sun slowly disappeared over the high mountain ridges and left us in pleasant shade and the afterglow. Mr. Sargent showed us sketches that he was doing, and took us out in the woods behind the chalet for a little walk. Some of his woodland studies in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts were probably made in that very place. Finally we went by starlight down the long mountain road back to our little villa in the Same Valley. Later, when we were in America again, Mr. Sargent visited us at our New Hampshire farm." (quoted from George de Forest Brush: recollections of a joyous painter by Nancy Douglas Bowditch)
John Singer Sargent habitually travelled on sketching expeditions during the summer months, often with friends and family along, and the Alps were a favorite destination. He painted all summer long, often getting his traveling companions to pose for him out-of-doors, resulting in many watercolors and oil sketches. These are a few of the vibrant pieces he completed in the Alps: there are many more studies from his summer trips in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' collection here.
