Skip to Content

Venetian Glass Workers

A work made of oil on canvas.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

Image actions

  • A work made of oil on canvas.

Date:

1880–82

Artist:

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925)

About this artwork

Trained in Paris, John Singer Sargent traveled to Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy early in his career in order to study how painters such as Diego Velázquez and Frans Hals captured the effects of light and rendered figures in space. Venetian Glass Workers is one of several genre scenes featuring glass-bead workers that Sargent executed in the early 1880s. This backlit view of a shop in Venice is dark and atmospheric except for the brilliant strokes of light green and silvery white paint that describe the canes of glass as tradespeople prepare to cut them into bead-sized pieces, which will then be polished and strung into jewelry.

Status

On View, Gallery 175

Department

Arts of the Americas

Artist

John Singer Sargent

Title

Venetian Glass Workers

Place

Venice (Place depicted)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

c. 1880–1882

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

Signed, lower left: "John S. Sargent"

Dimensions

56.5 × 84.5 cm (22 1/4 × 33 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

Reference Number

1933.1217

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/110761/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

Share

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive updates.

Learn more

Image actions

Share