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John Singer Sargent's British and American Sitters, 1890-1910
JOHN SINGER SARGENT’S BRITISH AND AMERICAN SITTERS, 1890-1910: INTERPRETING CULTURAL IDENTITY WITHIN SOCIETY PORTRAITS EMILY LOUISA MOORE TWO VOLUMES VOLUME 1 PH.D. UNIVERSITY OF YORK HISTORY OF ART SEPTEMBER 2016 ABSTRACT Began as a compositional analysis of the oil-on-canvas portraits painted by John Singer Sargent, this thesis uses a selection of those images to relate national identity, cultural and social history within cosmopolitan British and American high society between 1890 and 1910. Close readings of a small selection of Sargent’s portraits are used in order to undertake an in-depth analysis on the particular figural details and decorative elements found within these images, and how they can relate to nation-specific ideologies and issues present at the turn of the century. Thorough research was undertaken to understand the prevailing social types and concerns of the period, and biographical data of individual sitters was gathered to draw larger inferences about the prevailing ideologies present in America and Britain during this tumultuous era. Issues present within class and family structures, the institution of marriage, the performance of female identity, and the formulation of masculinity serve as the topics for each of the four chapters. These subjects are interrogated and placed in dialogue with Sargent’s visual representations of his sitters’ identities. Popular images of the era, both contemporary and historic paintings, as well as photographic prints are incorporated within this analysis to fit Sargent’s portraits into a larger art historical context. The Appendices include tables and charts to substantiate claims made in the text about trends and anomalies found within Sargent’s portrait compositions. -
John Singer Sargent in Historical Fiction
Sargentology.com John Singer Sargent in Historical Fiction Mary F. Burns ____________________________________ Survey of Fiction That Features Sargent as a Character John Singer Sargent appears as a fictional character in relatively few but widely varied works of fiction: Children’s and Young Adult books, short stories, literary fiction, mystery stories, a play and even a ballet. We’ll take each category in turn. Children’s and Young Adult Books One of the more interesting YA stories to feature Sargent as a character was Douglas Rees’s The Janus Gate1 (2006), a weirdly scary, paranormal tale of Gothic-style haunting involving the daughters of Edward Darley Boit. Sargent, while painting his famous portrait of the Boit girls, is drawn into the secret psychological world of the four neglected children of a neurotic mother, with dire consequences and intense challenges to the painter’s courage and sense of honor. His painting technique and style are delineated in some detail, and Sargent is portrayed as a polite, sensitive, astute observer. The story is told in his first- person point of view. The opening paragraph, addressed to the reader, gives a good sense of how the reader is to experience him: I have always been a man of first impressions. They strike me like bursts of light and overwhelm me, reducing me to silence, or to stuttering, telegraphic speech. I wave my hands and try to say something such as, “This painting of Millet’s is far too realistic for my taste. See how he has tried to get the absolute reality of every inch of the surface of these rocks, every leaf of these trees. -
Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends
Elizabeth W. Doe exhibition review of Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 14, no. 3 (Autumn 2015) Citation: Elizabeth W. Doe, exhibition review of “Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 14, no. 3 (Autumn 2015), http://www.19thc- artworldwide.org/autumn15/doe-reviews-sargent-portraits-of-artists-and-friends. Published by: Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art. Notes: This PDF is provided for reference purposes only and may not contain all the functionality or features of the original, online publication. Doe: Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 14, no. 3 (Autumn 2015) Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends National Portrait Gallery London, England February 12–May 25 2015 The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, New York June 30–October 4, 2015 Catalogue: Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends. Edited by Richard Ormond with Elaine Kilmurray. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2015. 256 pp.; 135 color illus.; index. $60.00 ISBN: 978-0847845279 In the last decade, a succession of John Singer Sargent exhibitions have focused on the artist’s impressionistic, dappled light and images of elegant women, swathed in lush fabric. While these familiar tropes certainly appear in the Metropolitan Museum’s recent exhibition, Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends, the exhibition's curators took pains to demonstrate that the artist’s interests expanded well beyond grand manner portraits of upper class sitters. By emphasizing themes of experimentation and intimacy, the show carved out a new space for the productive consideration of John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) as a portraitist, significantly amplifying his more familiar body of work as a society painter. -
Edward Elgar and John Singer Sargent
The Last Late-Romantics: Edward Elgar and John Singer Sargent Arthur S. Reynolds Although they were distinguished artistic contemporaries, the paths of Elgar and the painter John Singer Sargent crossed on very few occasions, and then only as dinner guests of a mutual friend. And yet they may have had more in common than their passing acquaintance suggests. This article draws parallels between their respective careers and temperaments, and finds much in both of their lives that casts an informative light on the other. March 1905 was a busy time in the life of Sir Edward Elgar. The month began in Birmingham, where Elgar had gone to supervise preparations for the inaugural lecture he was to give on 16March as Birmingham University’s first Peyton Professor of Music. By 4 March he was back at ‘Plâs Gwyn’ to collect Alice for an urgent London train journey to rehearse the London Symphony Orchestra for a concert at Queen’s Hall on 8 March. The programme would include two premières: Elgar’s new march, Pomp and Circumstance No. 3, and his ‘string thing’, the Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet and String Orchestra. As usual on important London occasions, the Elgars stayed with Frank Schuster at his house in Old Queen Street, Westminster. Schuster celebrated the performances of the new works with a grand dîner on 12 March. Among the guests was John Singer Sargent, by common consent the finest portrait painter then living. This was the third time the two titans of their respective art forms had encountered one another in Frank Schuster’s dining room. -
Performing Identities in the Art of John Singer Sargent Leigh Culver
University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 1999 Performing Identities in the art of John Singer Sargent Leigh Culver Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the American Art and Architecture Commons Recommended Citation Culver, Leigh, "Performing Identities in the art of John Singer Sargent" (1999). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3084. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3084 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3084 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Performing Identities in the art of John Singer Sargent Abstract In the elegant society portraits by John Singer Sargent, body language created social identities. The fallen dress strap and obvious makeup in Madame X, for example, declared her a “professional beauty”; the costume of Charles Stewart proclaimed him a British lord. Critics often conflated appearance and character in Sargent's images, yet Sargent used theatre and masquerade in numerous works to problematize essentialist links between appearance and character that were fundamental to turn-of-the-century class, gender, and racial stereotypes. This dissertation concentrates on the art Sargent produced after Madame X, as he recovered from the scandal it provoked in 1884 and as he established his patron base in England and America. Many of Sargent's later works can be seen as a response to the issues raised by Madame X concerning the relationship between appearance and character. An analysis of theatrical elements in Sargent's paintings elucidates the function of these images in variously maintaining and challenging notions of social identity. Chapter One discusses the critical reception of Sargent's art in the context of a turn-of-the-century culture engaged in classification and performance activities. -
The Lure of the Exotic: an Examination of John Singer Sargent's Orientalist Mode
The Lure of the Exotic: An Examination of John Singer Sargent's Orientalist Mode The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation TumSuden, Jennifer. 2016. The Lure of the Exotic: An Examination of John Singer Sargent's Orientalist Mode. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33797270 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Lure of the Exotic: An Examination of John Singer Sargent’s Orientalist Mode Jennifer TumSuden A Thesis in the Field of History of Art and Architecture for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University March 2016 © 2016 Jennifer TumSuden Abstract This paper investigates John Singer Sargent’s Orientalist paintings, branding them as a new mode of the pictorial genre. From a peripatetic upbringing emerged an artist with a penchant for the exotic. A painter-traveller above all else, Sargent sought to record his visible delight with the world. Not content to replicate the successes of men before him, Sargent set out on an artistic course to discover his own aesthetic and announce it to the world. His first Orientalist painting exhibited at the Salon, Fumée d’Ambre Gris (1880), was notable for its tonal virtuosity. In preparation for a grand mural scheme for the new Boston Public Library, Sargent embarked on a thorough investigation of the Near East. -
The Critical Evaluation of John Singer Sargent's Portrait
Locating cosmopolitanism within a Trans-Atlantic interpretive frame: the critical evaluation of John Singer Sargent’s portraits and figure studies in Britain and the United States from c.1886–1926. Andrew Stephenson, University of East London. Standpoint: This article examines how questions about John Singer Sargent’s American nationality, his Anglo-American expatriate experience and his works cosmopolitanism were evaluated differently by British and American art writers in relation to his portraits and figure paintings in the period from c.1886–1926. Born in Florence to expatriate American parents, American by nationality, trained in Paris, largely resident in London and working successfully in an expanding trans-Atlantic art economy encompassing London, Paris, Boston and New York, Sargent was revered as the archetypal ‘cosmopolitan’ artist. Yet in spite of his technical brilliance, professional success, the high prices paid for his work by private collectors and museums, and the publication of many complimentary critical evaluations and memorial essays, British and American art writers throughout his life and afterwards remained conflicted about the nature of Sargent’s cosmopolitan sensibility, and they openly disputed claims for his positioning within British or American schools of modern art. Key words: John Singer Sargent, cosmopolitanism, portraiture, figure painting, aestheticism. Text: In November 1903 the art writer Evan Mills penned ‘A Personal Sketch of Mr [John Singer] Sargent’ photographed in the same year by James E. Purdy (fig.1) and published it in World’s Work: Mr John Singer Sargent is a typical example of the modern cosmopolitan man, the man whose habits of thought make him at home everywhere and whose training has been such as to preclude the last touch of chauvinism. -
View Full of Compliments
Readex Report Every Shade and Shadow: Seeing John Singer Sargent, Master Portrait Painter, under the Spotlight of American Newspapers By Suping Lu Professor and Library Liaison, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Born on January 12, 1856, in Florence, Italy, to American parents, John Singer Sargent—one of the most important portrait painters of his time—lived all his life in Europe, including Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Great Britain. He did not touch U.S. soil until 1876 when he was 20. However, his U.S. citizenship and his ancestral roots in New England were sufficient enough for historians to classify him as a prominent American artist. More importantly, Sargent himself considered it an honor to be American; he remained an American citizen all his life, although he chose to live in Great Britain from 1884 until his death in 1925. In 1912 American newspapers reported that he would have received the British Order of Merit had he become a British subject. [1] Largely due to his American identity, in particular after he attained distinction as a portrait painter of upper-class Europeans, United States newspapers continuously carried news about Sargent during his lifetime. They were, for the most part, generous with their praise of his achievements and success, regarding him as “a master of technique, and as one of the most brilliant artists of his day, with no equal among the men of his generation.”[2] When Sargent was elected a full member of the British Royal Academy in 1897, the Cleveland Plain Dealer went so far as telling its readers that “Sargent has beaten his master, Carolus Duran, on his own ground. -
MFA Boston, John Singer Sargent Watercolors, Artist Biography, P. 1
MFA Boston, John Singer Sargent Watercolors, Artist Biography, p. 1 Contact: Karen Frascona Amelia Kantrovitz 617.369.3442 617.369.3447 [email protected] [email protected] John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) Biography John Singer Sargent was born in Florence on January 12, 1856, the eldest surviving child of American parents, Dr. Fitzwilliam Sargent and his wife Mary Newbold Singer. His father was a doctor who had practiced in Philadelphia, but the Sargents had traveled to Europe in 1854 and embarked on an expatriate existence, returning to America only for visits. Their other surviving children, Emily and Violet, were born in 1857 and 1870 respectively. Sargent had a cosmopolitan and itinerant childhood with winters spent in Nice, Rome or Florence, and summers in the Alps or cities and resorts like Pau and Biarritz: he was immersed in European art and culture and spoke French, Italian and German, in addition to English. Sargent’s father had hoped that his only son might follow a career in the navy, but it soon became clear that he wanted to train as an artist. He studied briefly at the John Singer Sargent, about 1909-11 Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence, but in May 1874, when he was 18, went to Paris, where the best art education was to be had. He entered the independent atelier of the fashionable portrait painter Carolus-Duran and enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study drawing from casts and from life. Carolus-Duran was a friend of Manet and of Monet, and was perceived by contemporaries to be allied to the modernist camp; he was concerned with direct, realistic painting and taught his students to work au premier coup (at the first touch), applying paint directly on the canvas with a loaded brush, a technique that encouraged a broad, painterly style. -
Advice on Painting from John Singer Sargent
Advice on painting from john singer sargent AS EXCERPTED FROM “JOHN SARGENT” BY THE HON. EVAN CHARTERIS, K. C. ______ ANNOTATED BY THOMAS JEFFERSON KITTS Table of Contents: Preface . 3 A Quick Note . 5 Miss Heyneman’s Account . .6 . Mr . Haley’s Account . 15 Sargent and a New Way of Seeing . 29 Select Paintings . 34 Cover image: “Reconnoitering” by John Singer Sargent Preface This pdf booklet is for anyone who is interested in John Singer Sargent and his working methods . It is offered out of respect and admiration for a master artist and as an acknowledgement of how his paint- ings have affected my life . I first encountered Sar- gent in 1984 while studying to become an illustrator and that discovery convinced me to pursue a paint- ing career instead . Back then Sargent was out of fa- vor with the academic world so there wasn’t much you could find on him or his methods, and what- ever you could find was not particularly insightful and consisted mostly of conjecture and specula- tion . There was nothing from the man himself . Of course, after thirty years of searching I have come to appreciate one does not learn how to paint by reading a book – or many books for that matter – one learns how to paint by painting . Sargent in his studio, with his painting, However, there are times when stumbling across an old book can help Madame X behind him. point the way forward . The following excerpts come from a biography writ- ten in 1927 by the Honorable Evan Charteris K .C ., a man who knew Sargent and his family first-hand . -
American Impressionist and Realist Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of Mr
from the Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Raymond ]. Horowitz American Impressionist and Realist Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Raymond]. Horowitz Introduction by JOHN K. HOWAT Curator, Department of American Paintings and Sculpture DIANNE H. PILGRIM Research Consultant, Department of American Paintings and Sculpture Catalogue by DIANNE H. PILGRIM American Impressionist and Realist Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of Mr. &-'Mrs. Raymond]. Horowitz EXHIBITED AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART APRIL 19 THROUGH JUNE 3, 1973 ON THE COVER: detail from The Fairy Tale, by William Merritt Chase, no.6 All color photography by Malcolm Varon, New York. All black-and-white photographs by William F. Pons, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, except: nos. 30,46 by Malcolm Varon; no. 24 by Taylor & Dull, Inc., New York. Designed by Peter Oldenburg Type set by Finn Typographic Service, Inc. Printed by Jaylen Offset Lithography Company, Inc. COPYRIGHT @ I 973 BY THE METRO PO LIT AN MUSEUM OF ART LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Pilgrim, Dianne H American Impressionist and realist paintings & drawings from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz. Includes bibliographies. x. Paintings, American- Exhibitions. 2. Drawings, American Exhibitions. 3· Impressionism (Art)-United States. 4· Realism in art. 5· Horowitz, Raymond J.-Art collections. I. New York (City). Metropolitan Museum of Art. II. Title. ND 210.5.I4P54 ISBN o-87099-122-1 Foreword In recent years American painting has enjoyed one of the most lively, interesting, and deserved revivals in the art world. Museums all over the country have redis covered, dusted off, and added to their American collections, installed them hand somely, and presented them in numerous worthwhile exhibitions, thereby helping to reopen the eyes of Americans to an immensely appealing and important part of their artistic heritage. -
John Singer Sargent 1856-1925 a Survey of His Life and Work
Page 1 of 8 John Singer Sargent 1856-1925 A Survey of his Life and Work Colin Lomas 07909 896 541 [email protected] “John Singer Sargent - The Van Dyke of our times” - Auguste Rodin John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was an American virtuoso portrait painter who settled in London and painted high society in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was born in Italy of American ex-patriate parents and was trained in Florence and Paris, settling in London in 1884/5 and continuing the bravura (bold and daring) tradition of Sir Thomas Lawrence, crossed with Velasquez. He visited the US frequently and painted large-scale decorations in Boston Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard University, but is best known for his portraits and for his brilliant watercolours, which may reflect his friendship with Monet, whom he met in 1870 and whose paintings he bought. In 1880 he visited Spain where he saw paintings by Velasquez. The technical skill and simple colour schemes of Sargent’s portraits reflect Velasquez, but seen through the eyes of Manet and Courbet: Sargent’s Mme Gautreau, exhibited in Paris 1884, shows all this but was a success de scandal and was one of the reasons for his leaving Paris for London. His huge output means that his portraits are almost everywhere in Britain and America. “His superficial brilliance is very like that of Boldini”. The entry for John Singer Sargent in Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists by Peter and Linda Murray. Boldini will be examined in Notes 4 “John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was the greatest portrait painter of his generation.