My favourite painting Nicky Philipps
El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent
El Jaleo, 1882, by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), 93in by 138½in, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, USA
Art critic John McEwen comments on El Jaleo N 1874, the young Sargent settled at the Folies-Bergère (Courtauld in Paris, where he enrolled at the Institute). Manet, a leading popular- I Ecole des Beaux Arts and entered iser of Velázquez and the Spanish school, the atelier of the painter Carolus-Duran. was much admired by Sargent. It has Carolus-Duran taught a spontaneous, been suggested that the dancer’s au premier coup, technique, citing refreshing orange on the empty chair Nicky Philipps is a portrait painter Velázquez as the supreme exemplar, is an artistic doffing of the cap to the whose new portrait of The the old master revered by the Imp- older artist, who liked to include Queen is on show at Fine Art ressionist avant-garde. a still-life vignette. Commissions Ltd, Duke Street, Sargent duly travelled to Spain with To paint a despised social group such St James’s, London SW1, along two artist companions, principally to as gypsies on such a grand scale, and with an exhibition of her work, copy the Prado’s Velázquez master- in the high style of such regal por- until June 28 pieces. The trio then travelled on horse- traitists as Velázquez and Goya, was, back through Andalusia, where Sar- in itself, a challenge to convention, gent was enthralled by flamenco (from in keeping with the defiant flamboy- I saw this picture while in Boston painting the Provençal, ‘flaming’), the wild, ance of the subject. a judge.‘ It is huge, and fabulous, and wonderfully dancer-led, gypsy music of the south. The picture was bought from the atmospheric. I love the romance of all things El Jaleo is a word for the general Salon exhibition by a marital relation Spanish anyway, and as a painting, rhythmic hubbub that accompanies of Mrs Gardner. She eventually prised a flamenco performance. The huge it out of him by building a Spanish it is just incredibly extravagant picture was the sensation of the 1882 Cloister in her art-palace home specifi- ’ Paris Salon, along with Manet’s A Bar cally to house it, where it still hangs. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA, USA
90 Country Life, June 5, 2013 www.countrylife.co.uk
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