Girl on the Beach, Sketch for ‘Oyster Gatherers of Cancale’ 1877

John Singer Sargent made this oil sketch, ‘Girl on the Beach’, as a preparatory study for his painting, ‘Oyster Gatherers of Cancale’. The final painting shows a group of peasant women working under the vast open sky of the French coast, but here the focus is on a single figure. Sargent was part of a movement of artists who sought to capture the lives of ordinary people, especially those working in rural settings. In France, the Republican government was keen to promote art that depicted the nation’s landscape and its people, and Sargent was aligned with this cultural project. Sargent made his sketch with loose brushstrokes, emphasizing the rough textures of the beach and the girl’s clothing. Her stance conveys a sense of fatigue, of manual labor. By depicting the working classes, Sargent contributed to a broader artistic conversation about social identity in late 19th-century France. To understand this work more fully, we might look at other paintings of the same era and study the writings of art critics at the time, considering the changing role of art in French society.