from an exhibition in 2025 at the Met, NY of paintings of John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe
John Singer Sargent was born in Florence, the son of expatriate Americans who lived in Paris and travelled through Italy often.
Showing an early interest in the graphic arts, he received his first training from the French portraitist, Carolus-Duran (1837-1917, French). On his first attempt in 1874, Sargent achieved entry to the prestigious École des Beaux Arts in Paris.
He began his career with landscapes but soon took up portraiture, a genre of which his teacher was the acknowledged master throughout the 1870s and until his student began to overtake him.
Carolus-Duran, oil on canvas, 1879.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. The Clark Art Museum, Williamstown, MA. Photo from its website
Sargent was among the portraitists who modernized the rules for portraits.
In the late 19th century, more and more the aim of portraitists became to expose the personality, even the interiority, of their sitters. Up to that time, it had been a matter of recording the status, occupation, wealth or influence of the sitter.
At this modernization, Sargent was cautious, skilled and very successful. He continued to paint portraits of the grand people in the grand manner.
La Vicomtesse de Poilloüe de Saint Périer (Marie Jeanne de Kergorlay), oil on canvas, 1883.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Musée d’Orsay, Paris loan in 2025 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo from owner museum site.
But, more and more, he experimented: placing his subjects in unusual compositions while paying minute attention to those attributes of dress or pose or poise or regard which identified the subject as members of an elite.
Until he got to the portrait of Mme. Gautreau, exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1884.
Sargent barely lived down the scandal of this work so far did it contravene the norms of high society.
Dr. Pozzi at Home, 1881, oil on canvas
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Samuel Jean Pozzi (1846–1918), was a surgeon, a pioneer in gynecology. He was an aesthete and collector and very well known. He is shown with an emphasis on his famous hands, dressed luxuriously in a colour and which faintly recalls the High Renaissance.
The sensuality of his slippers and the outfit which was only to be worn at home point to the doctor’s reputation as a man of many women.
The doctor’s life ended when he was shot dead in his office by a disgruntled male patient.
Sargent’s skills as a portraitist made him both wealthy and famous while still young. His portraits were regularly accepted for exhibition at the Salons in the first half of the 1880s.
Marie Buloz Pailleron (Madame Édouard Pailleron), 1879, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. National Gallery of Art loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
A hint of the wealth of Mme. Pailleron placed here in a park with a small view of her country residence behind her
Edouard and Marie-Louise Pailleron (Portraits de M. E. P. . . . et de Mlle L. P.), 1881, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Des Moines Art Center loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Painted when the artist was only 25 years old, this portrait of two children was presented and admired at the Salon of 1881.
The painting took 83 sittings of its central character, a young and self-willed girl who endlessly argued with the artist on the details of her clothing and pose. This is an example of Sargent’s willingness to paint a child as she was rather than as the cloying convention would have preferred her to be.
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
‘Las Meninas’ after Velazquez, 1879, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles in 2025
The artist’s teacher, Carolus Duran, was a great enthusiast for Velazquez’ paintings. When Sargent completed his training in 1879, he went to Madrid and registered himself as a copyist at the Prado.
Curatorial comment is that it was this painting which influenced the chiarascuro of ‘The Daughters of Edward Boit’ and its composition:
the apparent haphazard informal arrangement of the four children; the effect which is given of the girls caught almost as characters in a play; or in mid-thought in the middle of an ordinary day; a prominent slant as a framing device towards the edge of the picture plane – as in the Velazquez – to emphasize the informality of these portraits.
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882, oil on canvas.
Edward Darley Boit (1840-1915) and his wealthy wife, Isa Cushing, were in that group of American expatriates who lived in Paris and travelled in Europe frequently. Boit was a painter, an Impressionist whose paintings were frequently exhibited at the Paris Salon in the 1870s and 1880s.
The Boit daughters here are in the vestibule of their parents’ Paris apartment.
This painting is thought to be the most psychologically acute of Sargent’s portraits. Critics talked about the void in this portrait.
There was a disturbance in this household: the void appears to have been in the lives of the little girls: perhaps so without adequate parental authority that they did not treat the invaluable vases with which they are posed with care. In the vases, the curators found the detritus of the lives of children: sweet wrappers, tickets to performances, little bits of childish paper.
None of them married: an unusual fate for wealthy women of the time.
The two eldest, here shown at the rear against the shadows, suffered significant emotional problems in mature life.
In the deep ground, higher than the heads of these two girls, is a window of blocked light which gives one pause.
Sargent’s reputation continued to rise until he exhibited the portrait of ‘Madame X’.
Madame X (Madame X (Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, Madame Pierre Gautreau, 1859-1915, American), 1883-1884, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Metropolitan Museum of Art
The scandalous reputation of this portrait is related not only to the portrait itself but to the woman of the portrait: an American French Creole immigrant to France from New Orleans who married a banker twice her age and who was said to have many lovers. Mme. Gautreau was described as an arriviste: up to anything to obtain a place in high society.
Among the attributes of this portrait taken as absolute provocations were:
the unusual pose, described as ‘coquettish’ where the head is turned away from the viewer as a mock-diffident invitation;
the strap on the right shoulder which was originally painted slipped down to the upper arm (Sargent restored the strap to the shoulder when the Salon closed);
her artificial complexion: extreme pallor of the skin obtained by applying lavender powder, highlighted by henna in her hair and colour applied to her eyebrows and rouge to her ears;
the complete lack of jewellery which defied the convention of the day; the figure-emphasizing clothing which also defied the convention;
the table legs, fashioned as sirens with the tails of serpents: an allusion which was thought to reinforce her reputation as an arriviste with a second unholy allusion to the snake-as-tempter.
This portrait, which Sargent considered his best, damaged his reputation for a while. The sitter refused to pay the commission and Sargent left Paris for London and the US, taking the portrait with him.
Madame Gautreau herself withdrew from society for a while to heal her own reputation which this incident also damaged.
This portrait, however, made Sargent’s reputation as a portraitist in the United States when he sold it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1916.
Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast, 1882-83, oil on panel.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2025. Photo from the owner museum website
In 1907, Sargent gave up portraits done on commission and in time-consuming oils because he was weary of the demands of his very demanding clientele. He continued to make portraits, mostly in charcoal, of friends and acquaintances.
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Sargent travelled often in Europe as a child with his parents. Throughout his working years, He continued to visit Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and North Africa. He took inspiration and subject matter from his travels.
He visited New York and Boston not infrequently.
Sargent died of illness at his London home at 69.
Wineglasses, 1875, oil on canvas
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. National Gallery, London loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Young Man in Reverie, 1876, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Private collection loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Thought to have been painted on a summer visit to Naples or Capri.
Atlantic Sunset, 1876-78, oil on canvas
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Sargent and Claude Monet became friends when they met at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876. Monet’s influence can be seen in this painting of the effect of light on the water which Sargent completed on one of his trans-Atlantic voyages that year.
Monet’s influence can also be seen in the last painting in this blog: Sargent visited Monet at Giverny and painted with him in plein air.
Atlantic Storm, 1876, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
A painting of a storm on his first Atlantic crossing to visit New York when the artist was 20.
Staircase in Capri, 1878, oil on canvas
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Private collection loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Setting Out to Fish, 1878, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
This is the first landscape Sargent exhibited and it was much admired for his handling of light.
Neapolitan Children Bathing, 1879, oil on canvas Clark Art Institute,
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
The device seen strapped onto the back of a child to make him look like a little angel is a flotation device, thought to have been made from animal bladders and filled with air.
In the Luxembourg Gardens, 1879, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Philadelphia Art Museum loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Smoke of Ambergris, 1880, oil on canvas
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Sargent spent 2 months in Tangier in 1880. This image of a woman perfuming herself with ambergris is a fantasy. The model was posed on the patio of a rented house and the painting was completed in the artist’s Paris studio.
It was made to appeal to his Parisian clients when France was in full colonial flush. It would today be classified as an Orientalism: the depiction of non-Western life taken out of context to ends which have nothing to do with the real context and meaning of the image.
Sargent intended to demonstrate his skilled handling of whites.
Ramón Subercaseaux in a Gondola, 1880, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Dixon Gallery and Gardens loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Café on the Riva degli Schiavoni, Venice, watercolour on paper, 1880-82.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Private collection loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Sargent painted in watercolour since he was a young child. It was not a subject of his studies in Paris but he persisted with the medium much of his life.
Venetian Interior, 1880-82, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
A Gust of Wind (Judith Gautier), oil on canvas, c. 1883-85
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
Le Verre de Porto (A Dinner Table at Night), 1884, oil on canvas
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
An unusual composition in the dining room of Albert and Edith Vickers in which Albert Vickers is barely in the frame.
The Birthday Party, 1885, oil on canvas
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Minneapolis Institute of Art loan
Another unusual composition of Sargent’s friends, the artist Paul-Albert Besnard and sculptor Charlotte Dubray where Besnard is shown peripherally only.
Claude Monet, painting, by the edge of a wood, 1885, oil on canvas.
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Tate, London loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2025
An Out-of-Doors Study (Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife), 1889, oil on canvas
John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925, American active Europe. Brooklyn Museum loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2025
Sargent’s close friend since their Paris student days, the artist Paul Helleu (1859–1957), visited him with his wife at Fladbury, Worcestershire.
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