The Met in NYC Features John Singer Sargent

 

 

 

 

The Scandalous Madam X Portrait

  

 

Sargent in Paris

Through August 3

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

 

I’ve seen numerous John Singer Sargent exhibits in the past few years. If you live in Massachusetts, it’s almost unavoidable; few portrait painters come close to matching his reputation in the Bay State. He is considered the preeminent painter of society figures, though they were not his preferred company. He was paid handsomely for his endeavors, but not enough to put him in the social circle of his subjects. His work on the ceilings of MFA Boston and the Boston Public Library has been widely hailed. We’ve seen exhibits of Sargent and fashion, Sargent’s watercolors, Sargent and the Bott family, etc. MFA Boston and the Isabella Stewart Gardner have numerous Sargent portraits, the Clark in Williamstown has four, and you can also find his work at the Boston Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, at Harvard, and on the walls of museums in Andover, Gloucester, Salem, Springfield, and Smith College. There so many Sargents in Massachusetts that even AI doesn’t know exactly how many are in the Commonwealth.

 

Leave it to New York to try to one-up Boston. The Metropolitan Museum of Art show Sargent in Paris manages to give a new look on aspects of Sergent’s work by taking us back to his beginnings. Among other things, it reminds us of the basic absurdity of considering Sergent as a master of American portraiture. It would better to call him a master of then late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Though his parents were American, he was born in Florence, Italy, died in London, and spent more of his 69 years abroad (Corfu, England, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland) than he did in the United States. In short, John Singer Sargent was an expatriate American painter.

 

The Standard Bearer--Sargent channeling Franz Halls

 

 

 

 

Capri Girl on Rooftop--style a bit rough

 

 

 

Setting Out to Fish--channeling impressionists

 

 

 

His parents sent Sargent to study in Paris under portrait artist Léon Bonnat, who today is best remembered for his instructional skills. You can see in Sargent’s earliest works–he had a portrait displayed in the Paris Salón when he not yet 20–that he was doing what most young artists do. That is, he channeled artists who inspired him, including Velásquez, Franz Hals, Whistler, and Ingres. That he could do so with such skill was remarkable considering that he was accepted for study at the Accademia de Bell Arte in 1873, when he was just 17. The Met show features the work he produced from his three years in Paris.

 

 

 About 5 yrs later-Madam Errazuriz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, to showcase what he accomplished requires a look at more mature work, like Madame X and other Sargent masterpieces. To remind you, his portrait of “Madame X” (Virginie Amélie Gautreau) was considered one of the most scandalous portraits of the late 19^th century, as she posed in a slinky, sleeveless gown whose first iteration had one of the straps falling from her shoulder. It might not seem risqué today, but to show a married woman in such a state of relative undress shocked audiences whose values were informed by French and American versions of Victorianism. Tongues waged and many presumed an affair between painter and subject. Probably not! Sargent is thought by many art scholars to have been gay and there are many nudes of young men that strongly suggest it was so.

 

If you can get to New York before this show closes, it’s a quintessential look at a young man honing his genius and how he took his raw talents to the next level.

 

Rob Weir

 

If you're curious, here's Madam X in real-life