Study of Two Bedouins

John Singer Sargents Study of Two Bedouins from 1905-06 is an oil painting that exemplifies the artists working method during his travels in the Middle East, when he produced rapid oil studies of the people and places he encountered with a directness and immediacy that distinguish his travel sketches from his more formal commissioned portraits. Sargent, who had established his reputation as the premier portrait painter of the Edwardian elite, traveled extensively throughout his career, and the oil studies he made during these trips represent the aspect of his practice that was most free from the constraints of patronage and social expectation. The two Bedouins, rendered in Sargents characteristic fluid brushwork, are depicted with a combination of ethnographic specificity and pictorial economy that suggests both the individual character of the sitters and their typological significance as representatives of a way of life that Sargent found fascinating. The years 1905-06 place this study in the period of Sargents travels in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, when he was producing some of his most spontaneous and painterly works, freed from the elaborate compositions and social negotiations of his London and New York portrait practice. The study format, with its emphasis on quick observation rather than finished presentation, allows Sargent to record the effects of light on the Bedouins robes and the desert landscape with a directness that his formal portraits rarely achieve.

Sargents travel oil studies are among the most appealing and historically significant works in his oeuvre, revealing a dimension of his practice that was free from the constraints of patronage. The Study of Two Bedouins influenced the development of travel painting and ethnographic portraiture in the early 20th century.

An oil study by Sargent of two Bedouins from his Middle Eastern travels, combining ethnographic observation with fluid brushwork and pictorial economy in a work free from the constraints of formal portraiture.