Olive Trees at Corfu

Ancient olive trees stretch vertically to fill this canvas painted by John Singer Sargent in 1909 on the Greek island of Corfu. Sargent focused on the natural world—gnarled trees, green and brown earth, and distant mountains. He merely hinted at a human presence through the low farm buildings nestled under the trees.

    Sargent stayed in Corfu for about six weeks in autumn 1909 with his sister Emily, her friend Eliza Wedgwood, and the artists Jane and Wilfrid de Glehn. The group first spent three weeks in Venice, Italy, before arriving September 30 in Corfu and renting a villa a few miles north of the town. Sargent made both oil paintings and watercolors there, depicting the terrace and gardens of the rented villa and the surrounding countryside, with its olive groves and cypress trees. Around 1900, after decades painting society portraits in France and England, Sargent began to travel during the summer and early autumn to Switzerland, Italy, or Spain where he could paint informal figurative studies and landscapes. These pictures, often painted outdoors, surprised critics accustomed to the artist’s more traditional portraits.

  Olive Trees at Corfu shows a grove of monumental trees with twisted, sculptural trunks and dense branches. Their green foliage blocks the sky, which glows with the setting sun. In other paintings of olive groves in Corfu, Sargent often included olive gatherers or goats, but here his primary subject is the trees. Sargent exhibited this painting in summer 1910 at the New English Art Club in London, and critics described its “poetic feeling” and “serene peace.”

  The Terra Foundation owns earlier figurative paintings by Sargent, including Dennis Miller Bunker Painting at Calcot(TF 1999.130), an impressionistic outdoor scene portraying an artist friend. Olive Trees at Corfu offers an interesting comparison with The Olive Grove (TF 1992.25), a work painted in Italy by Sargent's contemporary William Merritt Chase, also in the foundation’s collection.

 

New English Art Club, London, England, 1910, no. 285 (as Olive Grove) (almost certainly, as described in reviews).

  The Friends of American Art Loan Exhibition of American Paintings, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, January 8–28, 1914, no. 26 (as Olive trees on Corfu). [exh. cat.]

  On loan to the City Art Museum of Saint Louis, Missouri, 1917.

  Memorial Exhibition of the Works of John Singer Sargent, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, November 3–December 27, 1925, addenda, no. 140. [exh. cat.]

  Paintings from Private Collections: Summer Loan Exhibition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, July 6–September 4, 1960, no. 110.

  Paintings to Live With: From the Collection of Mr. And Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson, William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, July 23–September 6, 1964, no. 18.

  From Goya to Wyeth: The Joan Whitney Payson Collection, Municipal Museum, Kyoto, Japan, September 13–October 12, 1980. Venues: Municipal Museum, Kyoto, Japan, September 13–October 12, 1980, Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan, October 17–December 9, 1980. [exh. cat.]

  John Singer Sargent, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 7, 1986–January 4, 1987. [exh. cat.]

  American Impressionist Paintings, Adelson Galleries, New York, February–March 1995.

  John Singer Sargent & Chicago’s Gilded Age, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, July 1–September 30, 2018, no. 37. [exh. cat.]

 

“Works of Art Loaned to the Museum,” Bulletin of the City Art Museum of Saint Louis, Vol. III, No. 3, September 1917. Text pp. 3, 6; ill. p. 3.

  Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the Late John Singer Sargent, [exh. cat.], Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1925. Ill. p. 14.

  Downes, William Howe. John Singer Sargent, His Life and Work. Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1925. Ill. p. 240.

 Charteris, Evan Edward, Sir. John Sargent, with reproductions from his paintings and drawings. New York, New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1927. Ill. p. 289.

  Mount, Charles Merrill. John Singer Sargent: A Biography. New York, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1955 (first edition). Ill. p. 449, no. K098 (as Olive Trees in Corfu).

  From Goya to Wyeth: The Joan Whitney Payson Collection. Kyoto, Japan: Municipal Museum, September 13–October 12, 1980. No. 75, ill. cat. fig. 75 (color).

 Hills, Patricia. John Singer Sargent. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1986. Ill. p. 196, no. 152 (color).

  Adelson, Warren, Donna Seldin Janis, et al. Sargent Abroad: Figures and Landscapes. New York, New York: Abbeville Press, 1997. Text p. 152, ill. p. 153 (color).

  Ormond, Richard and Elaine Kilmurray. John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1908-1913, Complete Paintings, Volume VIII. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2014. Text p. 83; 98-99, ill. p. 99, no. 1515, p. 360 (color).

  Madsen, Annelise K. John Singer Sargent & Chicago’s Gilded Age. Chicago, Illinois: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2018. Text p. 30-31, 65, 92, 209; ill. p. 31 (color), cat. 37.