(c) 2010 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

(c) 2018 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

(c) 2024 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Bus Horses in Jerusalem

painter John Singer Sargent (Florence, 1856 - 1925, London)

Date1905

Place MadeJerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, Middle East

MediumWatercolor on paper

Dimensions40 x 52 cm (15 3/4 x 20 1/2 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Accession numberP3w32

eMuseum ID723494

EmbARK ObjectID10874

TMS Source ID140

Last Updated11/6/24

Status

Not on view

Web CommentaryHorses have always fascinated artists. Here, Sargent renders these working horses with elegance and dignity. Less interested in the beauty of one single horse, Sargent chose an angle from which he was able to see the repeating forms of multiple backs. As Sargent stated in a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner, he was drawn to the romantic appeal of the subject during a trip to the Middle East.

Source: Oliver Tostmann and Anne-Marie Eze, The Inscrutable Eye: Watercolors by John Singer Sargent in Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Collection, exhibition on view in the Museum's Fenway Gallery, October 31, 2013–January 20, 2014.

BibliographyNotesGilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 35.
Philip Hendy. European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1974), pp. 228-29.
Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray. John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1900-1907 (New Haven, 2012), pp. 158-59, no. 1284.

MarksNotesSigned and inscribed in ink (bottom right): John S Sargent Jerusalem / 1905
Inscribed in pencil (verso): 1007

ProvenanceNotesIsabella Stewart Gardner purchased from John Singer Sargent, London on 7 January 1907 for £40.