Paul turner sargent biography
The Sargents planted their roots in Illinois years before Paul Sargent began painting the landscape. His grandfather, Stephen Sargent, was born in New Hampshire in 1797, but after a life of moving around from job to job, he eventually bought land and built a house with his wife, widowed Nancy Chenoweth, in Coles County Illinois. It was in this house that Paul Sargent’s father was born. Both his grandfather and father were deeply rooted in Illinois agriculture, Stephen Sargent being a well-known entrepreneur for his time. This house and the surrounding acres are common images in Paul Sargent paintings, and clearly represent the passion the Sargent family had for the land and soil of Illinois.
Paul Sargent was born July 23, 1880 in a house in Hutton Township to his parents John and Maria Anna Turner Sargent. His grandfather’s original home was right in the backyard. There are many points in young Paul Sargent’s life that influenced him to be the painter he became. The earliest of these was from one of his teachers at the country school, John M. Harlow. It was in his class that Sargent’s talent was first noticed by sketching famous works of arts. Mr. Harlow encouraged young Sargent to show his drawings to other students in the class. In his biography on Paul Sargent, youngest brother Samuel Sargent claims this seemingly small event as having an “encouraging influence in his young life.” It was around the same time at age thirteen when Sargent seriously injured a bone in his heel while jumping from a hayloft. He was bedridden for recuperation. It was his sister Pearl that leant him her oil paints, and brought out a passion for painting.
Sargent’s schooling continued his studies at the Brethren College in Westfield Illinois for a year. It was then that he transferred to the Eastern Illinois State Normal School in 1900, which is now Eastern Illinois University of Charleston Illinois. He graduated six years later. It was then that he ventured out of his hometown to enroll at the Art Institute of Chicago. Sargent did a lot during his studies at the Institute, often being part of advanced classes. It was during his time here in which he was inspired by larger canvases than what he is known for today. With this new inspiration, Sargent painted a few murals around the city of Chicago. These include genre scenes of the George Rogers Clark crossing into Illinois at the John M. Smyth school, a second at the Crippled Children’s House of a scene from Robin Hood, and the third at Sherman Park Field House of Captain John Smith landing at Jamestown with colonists.
By 1920 Sargent had returned to Hutton Township where he would spend the rest of his life. Gay Anderson, a local woman who had seen a collection of Sargent paintings at the Art Institute in Chicago requested him to bring his newest paintings to her house. It was then that Sargent sold his first painting, and also found a sponsor with Miss Anderson.
Paul Sargent often traveled to different states for inspiration as well as new opportunities for teachings and galleries. In 1920 Adolph Shulz invited Sargent to Brown County Indiana. It was during his numerous visits to the area in which Sargent became a member of the Brown County Artist Colony. The colony was created in the early 1900s as a group of academically trained artists with a passion for scenic landscapes and distinctive qualities of Indiana. At its height the Brown County Artist Colony had many visitors; in 1931 over 2,000 people visited the gallery in one day. In the 1940s as the original founding members began to fade away, and new trends in art began to take over, the association ceased to exist.
Though Coles County became Sargent’s muse for his most well known landscapes, he also frequently traveled during the summers to view different types of landscapes, and of course record them through his paintings. These travels included Michigan, Tennessee, Missouri Ozarks, Idaho, California and Florida.
Yet even through his travels, Paul Sargent always came back home. In 1920 he built a studio off of his family home in Hutton Township, though much of the real work was done outside, as close to nature as possible. Sargent was a true outdoorsman who wanted to paint the nature that surrounded him, and what better place to do that than outside. Sargent’s landscapes show a deep appreciation for his homestead. Sargent had a unique passion and understanding of the prairie landscape that is Coles County, and it shows in each and every one of his paintings. Paul Sargent passed away on February 7, 1946 in the same house in which he was born.
Bibliography
Goodrick, Evelyn. "Paul Sargent: The Prairie as Landscape." Illinois Magazine, September - October 1987, 5-8.
“Paul Sargent, Robert Root & The Brown County Artist Colony.” Tarble Arts Center Eastern Illinois University. January 28- February 26, 1995 (Exhibit Brochure)
Sargent, Paul. The Autobiography of Paul Turner Sargent Written in 1933. Charleston, IL: Tarble Arts Center, Eastern Illinois University, 1999. Print.
Sargent, Samuel. “Paul Turner Sargent” Biography. Unpublished.