Tanner’s visit to Tangier in 1912 was not only preceded by the prominent French artists Eugéne Delacroix and Auguste Renoir, but also by a fellow American artist, John Singer Sargent. This American Impressionist made two separate trips to the Moroccan coastal city, the first 
during the winter months of 1879 and 1880 directly after a visit to Moorish Spain (Olsen 73). While Tanner showed interest in observing an Islamic culture relatively untainted by Western influences in Morocco (Mosby Tanner 205), Sargent appeared to have been a more of a tourist, as he rarely traveled to smaller, more uncomfortable towns surrounding Tangier during his stay (Olsen 74). As a tourist, however, Sargent showed legitimate interest in the unique lighting and the exoticism of Tangier while writing to his friend Ben del Castillo: “Certainly the aspect of the place is striking, the costume grand and the Arabs often magnificent” (qtd Olsen 74). Interestingly, however, two of Sargent’s small oil paintings from his trip, Moorish Buildings in Sunlight (1879-80) and Moorish Buildings on a Cloudy Day (1879-80), do not show the striking qualities of which he wrote, instead revealing Sargent’s interesting vision, as he chooses to paint dull deserted alleys. As peculiar as the choice of
scenery was, the paintings do not quite display artistic innovation, as Sargent’s biographer Stanley Olsen calls these small paintings “[stamps] in his passport” (Olsen 75). Sargent seemed not to have come for artistic inspiration, but merely to satisfy his urge to travel. Sargent appeared more open to experimentation, however, during his second trip to Tangier fifteen years later.
After he had begun to establish himself as a pre-eminent portraitist, Sargent visited Tangier again in 1895 and painted watercolors that displayed a slightly more serious artistic study of the city’s 
architecture. In his two watercolors from this brief trip, Tangier (1895) and Street, Tangier (1895), Sargent retains his preference for empty streets but makes the perspective more intimate and distorted than his earlier Tangier oil paintings. Stephanie Herdrich, a cataloguer of Sargent’s work, suggests that these watercolors were a precursor to the “more complicated architectural studies that [he] made after the turn of the century” (Herdrich 289). Perhaps he was beginning to paint more seriously in Tangier, but since his stay was brief and his artwork still only about the size of a sheet of paper (Herdrich 286), these watercolors maintain some of the “passport stamp” quality of the earlier oil paintings. As a consequence, Sargent’s works in Tangier hardly receives any attention, and similar to Tanner’s works in Tangier, they exist as mere footnotes to his more famous portrait paintings.
For more on Sargent, see the Sargent in Arabia and Sargent’s Venice exhibitions on this website.
Images:
Sargent, John Singer. Moorish Buildings in Sunlight. 1879-80. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Sargent, John Singer. Moorish Buildings on a Cloudy Day. 1879-80. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Sargent, John Singer. Street, Tangier. 1895. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Sargent, John Singer. Tangier. 1895. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.