JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856-1925)

Over the course of more than thirty years of nearly annual visits to Venice, John Singer Sargent formed an abiding love for and fascination with the floating city's unique contradictory character, which inspired his depictions of its magnificent architecture and gritty life on the water. Unloading Boats is part of a group of watercolors depicting the ships and boats of the Venetian harbor, many of which are housed in museum collections such as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.
According to Richard Ormond, Unloading Boats was painted from the vantage point of the artist's gondola, likely in the environs of the Giudecca Canal, and depicts an open view of the shipping roads off Venice (John Singer Sargent: Venetian Figures and Landscapes, 1898-1913, vol. VI, New Haven, Connecticut, 2009, p. 147). The painting was a gift from the artist to Essie Wertheimer (1880-1933), the fourth daughter of the art dealer Asher Wertheimer, in January 1904 (p. 157). Asher Wertheimer was Sargent's single greatest patron, and his family were among the many friends who received Sargent's Venetian watercolors as gifts. A Sargent portrait of Essie with her siblings Ruby and Ferdinand (1902) is in the collection of the Tate, London.