John Singer Sargent's Lady Agnew of Lochnaw

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John Singer Sargent's Lady Agnew of Lochnaw

Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2015 Meet the Masters: Highlights from the Scottish National Gallery John Singer Sargent’s Lady Agnew of Lochnaw Jane Clark 21 and 22 October 2015 14 November 2015 Why do people still routinely fall in love with Gertrude Agnew, 123 years after John Singer Sargent completed her portrait? I’ll suggest it’s the potent combination of personalities, paint, and, importantly I think, evolved biology. When she’s at home in the Scottish National Gallery, the guards apparently call her ‘the hussy’ because of the regularity with which visitors rush in to make sure she’s there. And now she’s here in Sydney, to seduce a whole new audience… Select slide list John Singer Sargent, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh Anthony van Dyck, Rachel de Ruvigny, Countess of Southampton, c. 1640, NGV, Melbourne Joshua Reynolds, Susanna Gale, c. 1763-4, NGV, Melbourne John Singer Sargent, Monet painting by the edge of a wood, probably 1885, Tate, London Édouard Manet, Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus, 1868, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford Carolus-Duran, Mademoiselle de Lancey, 1876, Le Petit Palais, Paris Velásquez, Rokeby Venus, c. 1647–51, National Gallery, London Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, Musée d'Orsay, Paris François Sallé, The Anatomy Class at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, 1888, AGNSW, Sydney John Singer Sargent, Carolus-Duran, 1879, The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA John Singer Sargent, En route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish) also known as ‘Oyster gatherers of Cancale’, 1878, Corcoran Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. John Singer Sargent, A street in Venice, c. 1880–82, The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA John Singer Sargent, El Jaleo, 1882, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston Proudly sponsored by John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston John Singer Sargent, Dr Pozzi at Home, 1881, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles John Singer Sargent, Madame **** [Madame X], 1883-4, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Birth of Venus, 1879, Musée d’Orsay, Paris William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Bathers, 1884, Art Institute of Chicago John Singer Sargent, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, 1885-6, Tate, London John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1918-9, Imperial War Museum, London Select references: James Lomax and Richard Ormond, John Singer Sargent and the Edwardian age, Leeds Art Galleries, Leeds, 1979 Carter Ratcliff, John Singer Sargent, Phaidon, Oxford, 1983 Trevor Fairbrother, John Singer Sargent, Abrams, New York, 1994 Julia Rayer Rolfe, The Portrait of a lady: Sargent and Lady Agnew, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1997 Elaine Kilmurray and Richard Ormond (eds), John Singer Sargent, Princeton University Press, : Princeton, 1998 Richard Ormond, Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: complete paintings, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1998-2012, esp. vol. 5, Figures and landscapes 1883-1899 Deborah Davis, Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the fall of Madame X, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Penguin Group, New York, 2003 Alison Syme, A touch of blossom: John Singer Sargent and the queer flora of fin-de-siècle art, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA, 2010 Steven Pinker, How the mind works, Norton, New York, 1997 Geoffrey Miller, The mating mind: how sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature, Doubleday, New York, 2000 Geoffrey Miller, Mating intelligence: sex, relationships, and the mind's reproductive system, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New York, 2008 For access to all past lecture notes visit: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/members/current-members/member-events/meet-the-masters/ .

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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.
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View Full of Compliments
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