Florence and the Americans

By Olivia Weinberg

As with all long-term relationships, Florence and the Americans have history. They have been through the good times and the bad, the break-ups and the make-ups. Now they are back holding hands and exchanging flirty glances with an exhibition that digs up the past and shows us who’s who.

At the end of the American civil war in 1865, there was a surge in the number of American artists travelling to Europe, and the places that meant most to them were Venice, Rome and Florence. And so a gaggle of fresh-faced, boisterous Americans took up residence in the Tuscan capital, wooed by its irresistible good looks and ribollita. John Singer Sargent was one of them. A Florentine by birth, a fully fledged expatriate by choice, he is the most celebrated artist here (above: “At Torre Galli: Ladies in a Garden”, 1910). His watercolours are masterpieces, and his portrait of a pensive Henry James is a double whammy with a simple message—an important American in Florence, painted by an important American in Florence. But it is the lesser-known Duveneck Boys, a group of friends-cum-students-cum-artists, who chime the loudest.