John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was the most lauded portraitist of his day. At the height of his career, he painted the crème de la crème of society: Gilded Age titans of industry, American dollar princesses, and aristocratic Edwardian beauties. The foundations of his artistic practice can be traced to his time in Paris, where he arrived in 1874 at age 18 and stayed for a decade. He drew inspiration from his teacher, contemporary painters, a varied social circle of creatives and patrons, and art history.
Training in Paris
Sargent was a truly international artist. Born in Florence to American parents, his paternal side traced their ancestry to one of the oldest colonial families. Sargent traveled extensively in childhood throughout the European continent: winters in Rome or Nice, France, summers in seaside resorts or the Alps. He did not visit America until he was 20 years old. While Sargent lacked formal schooling due to the family’s itinerant expatriate lifestyle, he became fluent in four languages—English, French, German, and Italian. He was immersed in European fine art, with his mother encouraging him to visit great museums and churches and to sketch every day.
Determined to become an artist, Sargent enrolled at Florence’s Accademia di Belle Arti, but became dissatisfied with its instruction. He and his parents concluded that Paris would offer the best art training. Upon moving there, his education was twofold: He joined the teaching atelier of Carolus-Duran (1837–1917), a leading French portraitist, and enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts. Sargent grew adept at integrating classical traditions with the academic art practices of his contemporaries, developing a singular style that continued to evolve throughout his career.
Surpassing His Mentor
The first gallery in the Met’s exhibition features Sargent’s portrait submission of a family friend, the American-born Frances Sherborne Ridley Watts. Watts and Sargent first met as children in the 1860s, when both were living with their families in Nice, and they became lifelong friends. This early, though professional-grade, portrait was well-received by critics. It is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which notes, “the luscious skin tones, subtle plays of light, and feathery brushwork found in this painting are what made John Singer Sargent one of the most sought-after portraitists of his time.”
Sargent’s genius was already apparent, and when he showed two paintings the following year at the Salon of 1878, the press suggested even that he had outstripped his mentor Carolus-Duran.
Carolus-Duran’s own submission to the 1869 Salon is included in the Met’s exhibit, and it provides context for Sargent’s trajectory. This elegant portrait of Duran’s wife as a fashionable woman was critically acclaimed. It set a precedent for a specialized genre of large-scale canvases of idealized, modern Parisiennes who personified beauty, grace, style, charm, and mystery.
Another painting representative of this subject is the exquisite “Woman Wearing Gloves,” also known as ‘The Parisienne’” by the Swiss-born Charles-Alexandre Giron (1850–1914), a friend of Sargent. The woman wears a chic gown with jet embroidery and velvet appliqué that is complimented by a toque hat adorned with marabou feathers.
Pailleron Family
Throughout Sargent’s oeuvre, he was exceptional for his sumptuous depictions of fabrics. Their colors and patterns enhanced how the viewer perceived the sitter’s personality. His portrait of Marie Buloz Pailleron (Madame Edouard Pailleron) from 1879 was his first full-length portrait. A bourgeois beauty, Marie was part of a literary and artistic circle along with her poet and playwright husband, Edouard, whom Sargent painted, too. Here, the artist depicted Marie at the family’s country house. The portrait reflects traditional portraiture properties, such as lush portrayals of dress and jewelry, as well as Sargent’s individuality. Marie is shown out of doors and from a high vantage point.
Edouard was Sargent’s most important early patron. After commissioning a portrait of himself and of his wife, his children Marie-Louise and Edouard were Sargent’s sitters the following year. The resulting painting, which was complimented at the 1881 Salon, is an example of Sargent’s unique approach to depicting children. Traditionally, children in the 19th century were shown in sentimental vignettes. Sargent’s depictions of childhood were pioneering, as he captured the nuances of a young individual’s personality. In this painting, the tense, almost confrontational figure of Marie-Louise takes center stage.
As an adult, she recounted that the portrait involved 83 sittings, which may be an exaggeration, and that she and Sargent battled over her clothes and accessories. The artist insisted that she wear a cream-white silk dress, which allowed him to create soft shadows.
Spain and the Orient
Sargent’s mastery of painting white as affected by different lighting conditions is visible in “Fumée d'ambre gris (Smoke of Ambergris).” The composition originated during Sargent’s trip to Morocco. Scenes in the Orientalist genre such as this were popular with Parisian audiences. In addition to North Africa, Sargent traveled throughout Europe during his French period. He visited Haarlem, the Netherlands, to see the work of Frans Hals, whose bravura brushwork was deeply inspiring. One of his most significant trips was to Spain in 1879. Carolus-Duran was a fervent admirer of Diego Velázquez and urged his students to study the Spanish Old Master.
However, the features of two of the girls are obscured, an unusual approach to portraiture, and all the daughters are presented as disconnected from one another. The children share the composition with a shadowy interior dominated by two large Japanese vases, intensifying the picture’s mysterious tone. The artwork’s setting is the entrance hall of the family’s Paris apartment—a space that blurred the division between public and private spheres.
Another portrait that juxtaposes strikingly personal and public attributes is Sargent’s sumptuous “Dr. Pozzi at Home.” The sitter was the pioneering French surgeon Dr. Samuel-Jean Pozzi, who was also renowned for his glamorous social life. This full-size portrait shows the doctor in formal pose but wearing the informal attire of a scarlet dressing gown. The painting is a dazzling study of red tones that recall Old Master portraits of princes, popes, and cardinals.
Settling in England
In 1883, Sargent established his own studio in Paris. That year, he began work on a non-commissioned portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau (Madame Pierre Gautreau), which would go on to be titled “Madame X.” Gautreau was born in New Orleans to parents of French descent. She had been raised in Paris and had become a famous society beauty. “Madame X” was shown at the Salon of 1884 and, for the first time, a Sargent painting met with hostility, derision, and scandal.
The portrait of Mrs. Albert Vickers (Edith Foster) was shown as the 1885 Salon. His 1890 portrait “La Carmencita,” showing the Spanish flamenco dancer Carmen Dauset Moreno, was bought by the French state in 1892. This painting is the final work in the Met’s exhibit, and the museum writes, “Its acquisition effectively proclaimed Sargent, at the still-young age of thirty-six, one of the masters of his time, and marked his ultimate acceptance in Paris.”
“Sargent and Paris” showcases the depth of friendships, patronages, technical skills, and creativity that Sargent developed during his decade in France’s capital. In addition to oil portraits, he made sketches and watercolors and painted genre scenes, seascapes, and urban landscapes; examples of these are also on display in the exhibit. These early works shaped the stratospheric success Sargent achieved in the 1890s. Yet, the Met’s in-depth examination of his Paris oeuvre proves the assessment of Henry James, friend and American expatriate writer, that Sargent’s works from this period “offers the slightly ‘uncanny’ spectacle of a talent which on the very threshold of its career has nothing more to learn.”
