Borgo San Lorenzo c. 1910

John Singer Sargent painted this watercolor, Borgo San Lorenzo, and you can see how quickly he’s captured the building. It's all about the gesture and how he makes each mark. The light, airy texture of the watercolor creates a sense of fleeting time, like he was just passing through, quickly capturing the scene before moving on. Look at the building on the left, it's almost dissolving at the base. It's like he used a really wet brush and let the colors run together, creating these subtle shifts in tone. That dark, vertical brushstroke near the center of the painting, it reads as a window, or a shadow. It’s like he’s saying that things aren’t always what they seem. Sargent reminds me a little of Bonnard, who also had that incredible skill of capturing the fleeting moment and making it feel so immediate. There is a sense of the ongoing conversation between artists through time. It's really about embracing the ambiguous nature of seeing.