Sargent in Spain

In a 1908 painting from his time in Majorca, John Singer Sargent depicted yellow pomegranates clustered on a tree. Within the leafy embrace of its branches, several fruits split open, revealing the jewel-like seeds bursting from beneath the rinds. Without any visible sky or earth, the yawning green, orange and yellow are punctuated only by pockets of ruby; you can feel the warm breeze, inhale the tangy, citrus-like scent, see nothing but the depth of the vegetation. It is abstract and vivid, loving and sensual—an exceptional montage of the energy, color and natural beauty of the island. In many ways, the painting feels like a moment of devotion to the nation that, at the moment of this work, Sargent had visited and revisited for the last three decades.

Sargent had made his first trip to Spain in 1879, marking the first of seven journeys that would animate his outlook and nourish his aesthetic imagination for the rest of his career. He was 23 years old,