Here is the second installment from the magazine.
Paul Johnson: The book I relished most from 2010 was John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1883–1899. This is volume 5 in the catalogue raisonné being lovingly compiled by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray and published by Yale at £50. It contains a detailed account of Sargent’s greatest painting, ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’, which took him two years, 1885–86, to complete and is now in the Tate.
Also enjoyable was the latest instalment of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle which covers the year October 1860–October 1861 and is volume 37 in this remarkable series — notable as always for the feisty letters of Jane.
The year was marked by two striking biographies.
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