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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. He has surpassed Romney in a painter’s skill, while his vivacity is only equaled by Millais. He is almost worthy of the jealousy of Velasquez.”[3] In 1899 when Sargent’s second solo exhibition in the United States was held in Boston, The Boston Journal introduced him with a review full of compliments: As an artist and painter of portraits Sargent stands alone among modern painters. His art is cosmopolitan, or better, his own, but anyway it follows the track of no school. Some critics have called his work Spanish and compared him to Velasquez, but if he has any of the traits attributed to that great master they are his own, and will put him in relation to his period, in the same way it has placed Velasquez in his. Sargent’s greatest power is in his technique: his ability to comprehend and reproduce the substance he sees with felicity of brushwork and color. To do this he does not have to depend on sudden inspiration or peculiar moods. It is the result of intelligence catholic in extent and easily adaptable to his needs, a mind full of eagerness and curiosity, and a sensitive taste of wide range.[4] His father Fitzwilliam, a native of Gloucester, Massachusetts, attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, and practiced as an eye surgeon in Philadelphia, where he met and married in 1850 Mary Newbold Singer who was from a prominent local family and an accomplished artist in watercolor herself.[5] Misfortune struck when the couple’s firstborn died in July 1853, resulting in a breakdown on the part of the wife. As a result, the family went to Florence, Italy, in the fall of 1854 for distraction and solace. Although their sojourn abroad was intended as a temporary arrangement, they prolonged the move, eventually within Europe from one country to another. They spent winters in Nice, Rome and Florence, and summers in Switzerland, France and Germany. Due to his parent’s itinerant lifestyle during his early years, John Sargent was educated partly in Italy and partly in Germany. In 1873 he enrolled at Florence’s Accademia delle Belle Arti (Academy of Fine Arts) to pursue his formal art education. Fluent in French, German, Italian and English, “his youth was passed among surroundings very different from those that effect the intellectual bent of most American boys who become painters and sculptors.”[6] In May 1874 Sargent went to Paris with his father to investigate studios for the boy’s further art education. According to The Boston Journal, he was “bashfully asking the great favor—admission as a student in the studio of Carolus Duran.” [7] On May 30, 1874, he officially enrolled at the atelier of Emile Carolus-Duran, a youthful and talented portrait painter. Before long Sargent found himself a favorite student of his master. Among the other things Duran taught this willing pupil were some important lessons given while they worked together in the Luxemburg. We know that Sargent loved his work, and that he loved Duran, for in one corner of the Luxemburg ceiling he introduced a portrait of the teacher. Men always emphasize work which they love with something of this kind. Had he disliked him he would have managed to have worked in in some manner a caricature of Duran, as Michelangelo pictured in his decoration of the Sistine Chapel a caricature of an obnoxious cardinal in that portion of the “Last Judgment” which indicates the hottest fires of the souls who are damned.[8] During his study with Carolus-Duran between 1874 and 1878, Sargent’s personality left his fellow students an unforgettable impression: The serious and earnest side of Sargent’s character always impressed his fellow students in those Latin Quarter days. He had no taste for dissipation though he was by no means puritanical. The lighter side of his temperament found satisfaction in music, the theater and literature and in the keen appreciation of everything in the tastes and amusements of the day that had a new or original flavor.[9] Sargent demonstrated his remarkable talent at age 21 when he exhibited in 1877 at Paris Salon his first painting, a portrait of his young friend Frances Sherburne Ridley Watts. En Route pour la Pêche appeared at the Salon in May 1878; two months earlier its smaller version, entitled Fishing for Oysters at Cancale, was exhibited in New York at the Society of American Artists Exhibition. These paintings were praised by critics, but his reputation reached a new level when he painted his master Carolus-Duran, a portrait shown at the Salon in 1879. This work not only won him an Honorable Mention but also helped bring in a series of portrait commissions. It also marked the end of his apprenticeship with Carolus-Duran. At age 23 Sargent was well established in Paris with his own studio. He worked profitably on his commissions which never seemed to stop coming, and he continued to have his paintings exhibited at the Salon: Dans les olivers à Capri (1879), Madame Edouard Pailleron and Fumée d'ambre gris (1880), Portrait of Edouard and Marie-Louise Pailleron and Madame Ramón Subercaseaux, along with two watercolors of Venetian scenes (1881), El Jaleo and Lady with the Rose (1882), and The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1883). Enjoying his career as a painter and his growing reputation as a prominent portrait artist, Sargent was increasingly popular in Paris until May 1884 when his next portrait, Madame X, arrived at the Salon. As soon as the Salon opened on May 1, the portrait of Madame X was greeted with jeers from the crowds that gathered around it. The subject was not identified, but Madame Gautreau was well-known to the society that frequented the Salon, and both she and her mother demanded that Sargent withdraw the painting because of the ridicule it provoked. Sargent refused. The painting had not been commissioned. He owned it, and was therefore free to exhibit it as he wished.[10] Madame Gautreau, whose maiden name was Virginie Amélie Avegno (1859-1915), was raised on a Louisiana plantation. After her father was killed during the American Civil War, the young girl was taken to Paris by her mother who later arranged a marriage for her with prosperous banker Pierre Gautreau. Sargent was fascinated by her extraordinary look, her exquisite profile, her unusual purplish skin, and the sensuous and idle laxity of her gestures. He told a mutual friend that he would like to paint “an homage to her beauty.” After arrangements were made to have them introduced, Madame Gautreau agreed to pose for the painter. Sargent had intended to consolidate his position and enhance his reputation with her portrait. Instead, women who saw the painting jeered, “Viola ‘la belle!’ Oh, quelle horreur!,” while all of Paris made fun of Madame Gautreau. Art critics made an even louder fuss about the painting and the brouhaha went on for weeks.[11] Among the criticism of Madame X was the claim that the “lady’s ear appeared blushing, and its reddish cast contrasted violently with the whitish, mask-like face.” Sargent’s rendering of Gautreau’s dress also caused offense, and there was “the problem of the extreme décolleté, which some considered indecent, and which prompted one anxious critic to wonder if the dress might be about to fall off.” In addition, in the original unamended version of the portrait seen by some critics, one of the shoulder straps was shown in a fallen state, which was considered scandalous. Sargent later repainted the strap to make it appear more respectable.[12] With scandal surrounding Madame X, commissions were withdrawn and future ones appeared unlikely to Sargent. Convinced that Paris was no longer the location to advance his career, and also because of newly received English commissions, he left for England in June 1884. Although in 1885 he continued to exhibit The Misses Vickers and Mrs. Albert Vickers at the Salon, 1886 was the last time he submitted his painting to the Salon, where a portrait of Mrs.
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