In many of Sargent’s Venetian Studies of 1880 and 1882 he shows Venetian women stringing glass beads for the tourist trade. In a footnote of Linda Ayres essay, she explains that what they are holding are long colored glass tubes.
These glass tubes (also called cane) were probably made in Murano, then cut to bead size and passed on to women bead stringers. It appears that, in this scene, the glass tubes are being cut.
What we are seeing is an early stage of the bead creation. After they have been cut, the individual beads are then sometimes re-fired to inlay other glass for mosaics and designs. These were done by hand and one at a time.
The image of Sargent's painting is woefully inadequate at showing, without seeing the original, what he's been able to accomplish. Linda Ayres describes it this way:
Two men (the first we have seen in Sargent’s interior Genre paintings) and three women emerge ghostlike from the extremely dark background. But the glass workers are not the true subjects of the painting. Light – vibrant, shimmering light – is Sargent’s focus in this work. A window to the left and another , unseen window admit light to the workroom. Light reflects dramatically on white and pale blue glass. Sargent freely wielded his brush throughout the painting, especially on the thin glass bundles. In a technical tour de force, he rendered each bundle with just one brush stroke, the individual bristles of his brush creating separate rods.
(Linda Ayres, Patricia Hills book, P.55.)
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Italian Girl with Fan 1882 |
In Sargent's painting Italian Girl with Fan, David McKibbin has speculated that the model Gigia Viani is actually holding is a bundle of glass tubes prior to being cut
One of the earliest detailed descriptions of the Venetian bead industry is contained in an obscure book published in French in 1847 by the Venetian glassmaker Domenico Bussolin. Intended as a "Guide for the Foreigner, " this work contains good information concerning bead manufacturing techniques and the socioeconomic aspects of the industry. To make this text generally available, a translation was prepared by Karklins and Adams: Dominique Bussolin on the Glass-Bead Industry of Murano and Venice (1847), by Karlis Karklins with Carol F. Adams
John Singer Sargent, An Exhibition -- Whitney Museum, NY & The Art Institute of Chicago 1986-1987