When one thinks of paintings from the late 1800s and early 1900s, the names that come to mind are Monet, Degas, Renoir, van Gogh and Pissarro. All were Impressionist painters, with van Gogh usually termed a post-Impressionist. Few people today aside from art experts will even know the name John Singer Sargent. As he studiously avoided becoming a member of that movement, his worldwide fame has faded. Another reason is that although technically an American citizen, he was born in Italy, and lived nearly his entire life in France and England. Thus, his exposure in America was muted. However, as this exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shows – on the 100th anniversary of his death – he really was one of the finest painters of that age.
Even as early as his student years, Sargent enjoyed painting sensuous figures of young men. Young Man in Reverie (held by the Hevrdejs Collection) competes for attention in this exhibit with Man Wearing Laurels (1874-1880; pictured here). In this latter work, “Sargent modulated his tones to create the sultry figure emerging from the dark background.” A third example is a portrait of Albert de Belleroche (in a private collection). The Met description coyly states “Sargent made many sketches of his friend, whose chiseled features, angular jaw, and hooded eyes represented a type of beauty he found appealing. Sargent’s images of Belleroche have fueled speculation that their relationship was romantic, though Sargent was extremely private about his personal life and left no overt evidence of any liaisons.”
Speculation has swirled for a century as to whether or not Sargent was gay. The best assessment of Sargent is in a 2022 book (The Grand Affair) by Paul Fisher. In the 1890s, Sargent made Nicola D’Iverno his studio manager and valet for 25 years. D’Iverno also became a favourite nude model for Sargent, but these works were done after the Paris period covered here.
The gay aristocrat Robert de Montesquiou, the model for Proust’s great homosexual character the Baron de Charlus, is just mentioned in passing in the excellent catalogue produced by The Met for the exhibit. A read of Fisher’s book lets us in on the juicier aspect. Sargent became friends with Robert, and when Robert visited London with two friends – one of them a boyfriend of Proust – Sargent gave Robert a letter introducing the three aesthetes to Henry James. Like Sargent, James never married and he is now regarded as the greatest gay author of the early 20th century. There is no ‘smoking gun’ evidence for either James or Sargent being gay, but it is beyond a reasonable doubt. Strictly speaking, all we can say is that both had very private lives, and both were bachelors.
Like Gianni Versace, who loved to create fabulous clothes for women, Sargent loved to paint women wearing fabulous clothes. And it really is to these paintings that most of the attention in the Met exhibit is devoted to.
The most ink, and the most images, are devoted to Madame X. That this painting created an enormous scandal in Paris shows just how far removed we are from 1884, when it was exhibited for the first time. Now, it just looks like a fine full-length portrait of a woman wearing a solid black gown. Nothing startling or scandalous about that!
Sargent’s most famous painting (which was sold to The Met in 1916) is of a Paris socialite, Virginie Amelie Gautreau. Sargent labelled it Madame X (pictured here), which obviously was meant to enhance its mystery, but the face and figure of Gautreau were so well-known that no one was fooled by the X. Robert de Montesquiou called the painting “magnificent and terrifying.” The catalogue devotes an entire chapter to the painting, and several studies Sargent did of her in various poses (the viewer at the exhibit can carefully study these sketches, placed beside the great canvas). The storm surrounding this work was such that it marked the effective end of Sargent’s sojourn in Paris; he left for London soon after, and stayed there for most of the remainder of his life. He was, however, not ostracized for long. Both the French and British showered him with awards afterwards.
Perhaps the fact that one of her sequined shoulder straps was drooping set off alarm bells in those Parisien heads viewing Madame X in 1884. Her makeup-enhanced pale skin (tending to a blue pallour), bare shoulder and plunging bodice “was seized upon as evidence of a suspected lax morality.” Sargent himself reinforced this notion in a letter he wrote to the other great gay figure of the day, Oscar Wilde. “She looks like Phryne,” Sargent wrote in March 1883, invoking the image of a famously beautiful courtesan from the 4th century BCE. Phryne was put on trial for impiety, but duly acquitted of the charge.
Since the fallen shoulder strap caused such a sensation, Sargent actually redid the painting to put it back on her shoulder! Luckily, a photo the original exists, and is given on page 164. In this debased age, with Bianca Censori appearing essentially nude in a sheer dress at the Grammy Awards this year, it is impossible to imagine how something so innocuous as a fallen shoulder strap should have even merited a comment.
Gautreau herself “embraced the scandal,” making sure she was seen dressed in strikingly similar garb at the theatre, just 2 weeks after the opening of the Salon, on May 11, 1884. Two years later it was written in Paris that “she has carried to unparalleled perfection eccentricity in costume and coiffure.” She died in 1915, only 56 years old. Sargent survived her by 10 years, dying at age 69. In the words of Sargent, Gautreau possessed “unpaintable beauty.”
While this striking portrait marks the end of the exhibit, there are many highlights along the way. It was with Dans les Oliviers à Capri, set on the Isle of Capri, that “Sargent truly asserted himself fully as a painter of types.” The catalogue states it exhibits a “discreet, vaporous, and romantic atmosphere.” He did this delightful work in 1878, but his first visit to the island was in 1869, when he was just 13.
One of Sargent’s most famous works is El Jaleo (1882), depicting a Spanish Romani dancer in the foreground, with several musicians lining the wall in the back. Loosely translated, El Jaleo means ‘the ruckus,’ and it was his “first major triumph with the Parisian public at large.” He went to Spain in 1879, which is when he got the idea for this iconic work. The German Romantics in the early 19th century had the notion that paintings were ‘frozen music.’ Nothing embodies this concept better than El Jaleo.
Sargent painted a wide variety of subjects, including an Atlantic Storm (1876), two works from 1879 showing an orchestra rehearsing, a group of women in northern France setting out to fish (1878), architectural works inspired by his visit to Morocco in 1880, and paintings of Venice: he visited Venice almost every year from 1896 to 1913. Thus, even though the exhibit is entitled Sargent and Paris, it includes much more than French subject matter.
This is a real blockbuster show and a tremendously well-displayed exhibit; allow at least 2 hours to see it properly. The catalogue features 99 full-page colour plates, plus many more images in colour and B&W. Colour rendition is superb, and certainly required for these works. An essential purchase for anyone who makes the effort to see these works by Sargent.
Man Wearing Laurels is at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Madame X is at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Works are on loan from many major galleries, including the National Gallery (London), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Myron Kunin Collection of American Art (Minneapolis), High Museum of Art (Atlanta), Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, Massachusetts) and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond). The exhibit was also shown in Paris, with some paintings only on show in Paris, and others only on show in New York.
“SARGENT and PARIS” is on at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, until Aug. 3/25
The exhibit catalogue is by Yale University Press. It lists for $50.
The book is edited by Stephanie L. Herdrich of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It features essays by seven world experts on Sargent’s life and art. Passages in my review that are in quotes are from this catalogue.
for more on beauty, read my other recent article: