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Highlight for May 1999: John Singer Sargent in Boston
Sargent's relationship with Boston spanned his entire working life. Boston was the location of his first one man show in 1888 and was the site of his three major mural commissions (the Boston Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, and Harvard University's Widener Library) which Sargent created at the culmination of his career. In the May, 1999 broadcast, Greater Boston Arts interviews Art Historian Mary Crawford Volk about John Singer Sargent's life and work. The following are excerpts from this interview, designed to provide some context for Boston's Summer of Sargent.
Important Easel Paintings
Other information about John Singer Sargent on the web includes:
Art Historian Mary Crawford Volk: When Sargent undergoes this training for the three years or so he worked actively with Carolus-Duran in Paris, he begins even within the atelier system in Paris to become a kind of celebrity figure as a student, because he was able to incorporate the teachings so successful that anecdotes are told about how Carolus and Sargent became more friends than actually master/pupil. In any case, Carolus asked for the portrait and Sargent paints him. And the portrait is shown in the Salon in 1879 and becomes his first, I would say, significant success as a young painter. And gives us something of the sense of flamboyance that Carolus-Duran was notorious for. But, also in the very direct frontal gaze, the very engaging kind of gaze that Sargent gives him, captures brilliantly a likeness of the man. So that it fulfills marvelously the first criterion of formal portraiture, which of course is that of likeness. But, it gives us the attributes of Carolus as a figure in the Parisian art world as well. Very interestingly, it also kind of documents the relationship between the two, because it is wonderfully inscribed across the upper border. And Sargent is fond of inscriptions. There are quite a few of them on his paintings. But, this is one of the most telling, I think. He inscribes it in French signing his name to "My dear master, your affectionate pupil." So, it acknowledges his status as a student, but he also in a way signs off on it as a kind of graduation statement. It becomes both a homage to his teacher, and a kind of declaration of independence. And is and remains, I think, one of his very finest portraits.
It's followed in 1882 by the great picture "El Jaleo." This, of course, is a picture of a very different order. It was intentionally prepared by Sargent over the course of the preceding two years, although it's shown in 1882 publicly. He begins work on it really, and has the idea of such a picture while he's traveling in Spain in the winter of 1879-80. So Spain and Spanish culture, particularly Spanish Gypsy culture, is the major source for the picture. But, the Salon is the intended audience. And he shows it in the Salon 1882 to resounding success. It's probably the most unqualifiedly successful picture of his first decade. It's also the biggest picture that he paints before 1890. This has something to do with his Salon setting, but it also has to do with Sargent's desire to work to scale. It measures almost 12 feet across, so it's large even by modern standards. It shows this dynamic figure of a Spanish dancer, a Gypsy dancer, moving across the stage of probably a simple tavern somewhere in the south of Spain. It pays homage to the great shining masters of Spanish art, particularly Goya and Velazquez, who not incidentally had been advocated, Velazquez in particular, by Carolus-Duran. Carolus-Duran chanted Velazquez's name apparently in his studio before his young students, "paint like Velazquez, paint like Velazquez." And both Velazquez and Goya are archetypal exponents of painterly painting, the kind of bravura handling of pigment, the very subtle tonalities. Velazquez, in fact, in many ways is a monochromatic painter. And it's these kinds of models that lie behind the painterly accomplishment in El Jaleo. And also, I think, attribute as well to the vernacular culture of Spain, which Sargent was very deeply attracted to. He goes back to Spain six or seven times during the course of his career. He writes to friends enchanted with Spanish culture. He's attracted to exoticism, I would say, in general, and he finds it in Spain, and particularly Spanish Gypsy culture. We have a tribute to that kind of attraction in "El Jaleo" in 1882. It made him a very conspicuous figure in the Parisian art world after it was shown. And it also opened a market hitherto more or less closed to him because it was bought on the spot while it was still showing at the Salon by a prominent Bostonian, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, and brought to this country. It serves in a certain sense to introduce Sargent as a man of accomplishment, an artist of accomplishment to an American audience as well.
"Madam X," of course, would be the other extraordinarily successful, but in this case also scandalous picture from his first decade, shown in Paris in 1884. And as you can see immediately, unlike "El Jaleo" we've got a formal portrait here. "Madam X" is probably a direct descendant of "El Jaleo" because it's a tonal picture primarily. She's a stylish lady in black, and conspicuously in a very low cut dress with an extremely arresting profile, which was apparently her chief attribute in social circles. And she assumes a kind of mannered pose, twisting away from the viewer-- the right arm angled against a small table, and the other clutching her skirt and pulling it against her, so that the silhouette of her flesh against this dramatic black dress makes for a stark and rather hyper-stylist silhouette. Exactly the effect that Sargent wanted. As a formal portrait, it's highly original. Usually a beautiful female sitter would be facing the viewer and showing off her allure in a more direct way. Here the lady becomes almost a kind of art object, rather than a likeness of an individual. So that within the annals of portraiture, she's a highly original example. But, the portrait became a scandal for those very reasons. He breaches the boundaries of the conservative genre of French formal portraiture. The lady's mother came to him in tears accusing him of ruining her daughter and so forth. Sargent, of course, was chagrined, and I think taken aback, and, at least in part as a result of this reaction, decides to re-locate to London. So his career as a successful young painter in the Paris world of the 1880s is cut short by that. Still, interestingly, as a footnote in 1915 when he agrees to sell the painting to the Metropolitan he tells Edward Robinson, who buys it at the Met from him, "Probably the best thing I've ever done." A great picture. Moving forward, I would say we'd have to take him up now in England, since he re-locates there in 1886 and the rest of his career really unfolds in London primarily, although he does work in the country from time to time. But never so consistently as in the late 80's. In the three years after he relocates, 1886-89, he works every summer outside London. And he's really working in a vein that's concerned with plein air painting in the French sense. He comes at this point as close to French impressionism as he ever gets.
The masterpiece from these three years is, of course, "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" at the Tate Gallery, which he shows to great success in London at the Royal Academy in 1887. I think it's fair to say that it launches his English career. It's a picture which remains enchanting to everybody who sees it. I think it's hard not to like a painting of beautiful young girls. But he sets those young figures in this rather tapestry-like decorative environment, with the white lilies, the carnations and the roses of the title. And shows them also at twilight in a kind of nocturnal setting when daylight is waning and night light is beginning with the glow of the lantern. He artfully juxtaposes two kinds of light in a virtuoso fashion. Impressionist painting is primarily concerned with the study of light, and he kind of doubles the reference. This was recognized when the painting was shown. He also, I think, draws very knowingly on a tradition of English pre-Raphaelitism in creating this beautifully decorative effect in the setting he gives the children. One highly contrived, because he can only paint about 30 minutes a day. It took him two summers, in fact, of that to bring the picture to completion. He creates a delightful hybrid in "Carnation Lily Lily Rose" which achieves tremendous success officially when it's bought by the Royal Academy for the English nation. In a it way certifies Sargent as a painter to reckon with in London.
And after that it's history, because he begins to paint and show in English circles beginning around 1890 yearly to tremendous applause. The circles particularly of formal portraiture are open to him from about 1890 onward. The painting that probably establishes the benchmark for that is the wonderful, sort of ravishing portrait of a very beautiful young woman named Lady Agnew that he shows at the Royal Academy in 1892. This lady remains certainly among the most alluring of Sargent's formal portraits. Lady Agnew was a young married woman whom Sargent didn't really know but whom he's been asked to paint. And she sits for him actually in ill health. Her apparent relaxed mode is actually probably that of enervation because she'd just been quite ill. There's a record of her lacking in energy during the sittings and so on. But, Sargent gives her the most beautiful kind of frontal attitude seated in this French armchair, backed by a brilliant piece of turquoise silk. And then shows her garbed in this beautiful white satin dress with a lavender sash off to one side. She has no personal attributes. She's not a figure who is shown in terms of accomplishments in any way. But, rather with extraordinary intimacy for a formal portrait. We feel we're close to her. Her knees jut forward so that it's as though we're sitting right in front of her on eye level, in fact. And brought into a kind of embrace that's established by the artful use of the armchair. And the coloration is brilliantly feminine. Pale tones and a kind of almost boudoir-like setting that sort of wraps the lady and gives her a backdrop, so that there's a beguiling quality to the portrait, which I think brought Sargent immediate renowned as a painter of women. And he is almost immediately a kind of favorite son for the English aristocracy.
Quite different, just to bring her in as an alternative, is his portrayal slightly earlier of a great American aristocrat, Isabella Stewart Gardner. Unlike Lady Agnew, but like her as a full-length portrayal, she is shown in terms of attributes. Of course, a very different character. And Sargent artfully puts her against a backdrop of a very different sort, a connoisseur's choice of a piece of Italian brocade that he enlarges about three times in scale. The piece of fabric is still at Fenway Court and was owned by Mrs. Gardner at the time. But he stations her as a full-length, fully frontal, as was Lady Agnew, but with a hieratic dignity, artfully working her arms down before her and stringing her waist with some of her favorite pearls hung with rubies, in a way, making her more than a likeness, lifting her into the realm of a kind, as one of the critics said at the time, a Byzantine deity, with a sort of specialness that the lady herself I am sure was delighted by. Her husband, however, wasn't and when the painting was shown publicly in Boston that winter, again the décolletage, some adverse criticism gave it an edge of muted but perceptible scandal, so that Jack Gardner refused to ever have it publicly shown again during his lifetime, and Mrs. Gardner complied with this, so that it went into Fenway Court and stayed there after the turn of the century. She is a direct descendant I would say of "Madam X," a painting that Mrs. Gardner saw in Sargent's study when she met him in London, and admired. So we have another dashing lady in black."
Art Historian Mary Crawford Volk: Fry in 1926, when he wrote this, has about two decades experience as something of an apostle for the French avant garde in English circles. He had known Sargent from the turn of the century. And his criticism, it's very interesting, his early criticism written around 1900 or so is really essentially positive. He reviews various of Sargent's exhibitions, various paintings that are shown publicly in London. And one would count him in reading what he writes in 1900 as one of Sargent's supporters. But, there's a break that occurs right around 1910 between Sargent and Fry that's quite fascinating. Because Fry begins, at that time, something of his career as a kind of promoter of the avant garde, the French avant garde in particular in London circles. And there's a very important, historically very important exhibition held in 1900 at the Grafton Galleries that Fry organizes. And in order to try to accomplish a kind of acceptance for this kind of painting, painting by Cezanne, people that we now take for granted as great artists, but at the time, particularly in England were very seldom understood, very seldom exhibited. And I would say reacted against, in general, in established art circles in England. So, Fry has a mission really in the exhibition of the Grafton Galleries. In order to try to drive a wedge into public opinion in favor of French painting of this sort, he enlists or attempts to enlist the support of the establishment. And among those figures was certainly John Sargent. He apparently writes Sargent privately and asks if he can use his name as a supporter of the exhibition. And Sargent replies negatively. But, when the exhibition takes place and Fry writes something about it, he talks about it in terms of the painting having found support among a group of English establishment figures, including Sargent and one or two others, which of course went directly against what Sargent had permitted him to say. There's an exchange in the press, and Sargent writes a letter that rebuts this. I think thereafter there were at best strained relations between the two men. Fry goes on in his career, very successful career as a modernist critic. And Sargent goes in the other direction to accumulate honor after honor after honor as a figure of the establishment. One would hesitate to say that in 1926, just after Sargent's death, Fry is getting even. But, certainly his criticism is a very substantially dismissive one just at the time when the establishment, that is the Royal Academy, has mounted an extraordinary tribute to Sargent's achievement. So, the relationship with Roger Fry, and the modernist criticism that stems from it, is a complex one, but clearly represents two opposing points of view with regard to the critical posture developing just after the turn of the century. Sargent suffers from it really. It's picked up by others who write later in the 20's and becomes a kind of banner for increasingly dismissing Sargent as unimportant. I think that a kind of vindication of Sargent as a painter on the large scale, as a wall painter, is probably in the offing. There will never be unanimity, I don't think, critical unanimity on Sargent's accomplishment as a muralist. I think it will always be an accomplishment that will play to mixed reviews.
But, from what I've seen of the restoration [of the Museum of Fine Arts murals], and I think Lydia Vagts is doing a very exciting job, particularly the color tonalities to what they would have looked like when Sargent completed his paintings, reveals a much more sophisticated and subtle kind of realm of color harmony than we are accustomed to seeing. The [Museum of Fine Arts] murals, in my lifetime at least, have tended to look a bit like bad 50's interior decoration, and have been perhaps rightfully rejected as such, although even the 50's is, in a way, enjoying a piece of revisionist criticism right now. I think that the original coloration that Sargent gave the murals represents a much more sophisticated and much more genuine neo-classical series of harmonies that will be gratifying to see. Again, it won't be everybody's cup of tea, but then, few artists are. I think it's difficult to get unanimity on anything these days, and I'm not sure unanimity is even particularly desirable. It will also be exciting, I think, at a time when a sort of multi-cultural diversity of critical opinion is especially vigorous in art circles. It will be interesting to see where the critical cards fall after the murals are refurbished and unveiled to view because we may find some surprises. Critics who are also adherents of other kinds of painting could very readily find themselves being adherents of Sargent, too. It's an age when revisionism is going on in all different quarters. And a reappraisal of Sargent's accomplishment is part of that."
Art Historian Mary Crawford Volk: A typical accomplished portrait from the 90's displays, with the kind of virtuosity that has rarely been equaled in the history of portraiture, a kind of energetic surface, an extraordinary vitality of brush work. There's a build up of impasto in the highlights, a sort of richness and rather sensual delight in the use of pigment. It cascades across satins, it crackles in the taffeta skirts. It deftly outlines the filigree of a lace cuff. It is a sort of wallowing in the technical virtuosity that Sargent was capable at his very best.
You don't get this in the murals. There tends to be a use of heavy outline, in a great many cases, that establishes contours rather than surface energy. There is a definite flattening of effect where the forms are essentially created in two dimensions. And there's a very strong relationship between contour and interval, a sense of patterning that results between the contour of an established form, and the interval between it and the next form, so that one can read the forms in terms of pattern. And in place of the impasto, the kind of crackling sensual surface that Sargent develops so deliciously in his easel paintings, we find him moving in the direction of relief ornament, or a kind of sculptured bas relief surface, so that while there's very little impasto in the murals-- we now have the opportunity to look at all of them at fairly close range because of the cleaning project going on-- he does create the third dimension very definitely. And he's thinking in terms of the third dimension pretty substantially, even from the Library Program onward, by using relief, actual molded surface. It's done either in plaster, in some cases, or in paper maché. So, he's really working in the third dimension in a bas relief way.
He seems to replace his sensual surface, pigmented surface in the portraits with this kind of option in the murals. But, after all, Sargent was not a sculptor. So to begin to move into what is clearly a sculptural idiom in the murals, is a pretty radical break with what he's done before. He was quite happy to take on commissions, and the first commission that comes is the Library one. Certainly he was not going to make any money. The amount offered was quite minor. It was a meager sum of $15,000. He was making much better money than that doing portraits. So clearly a financial advantage was never a reason for undertaking the commission. It had to have been justified for him to do it on other grounds. And, I think, those other grounds came into this domain of feeling the challenge, taking on something new and different that would be challenging. This is to his credit, I would say. I don't think he felt he would be criticized for doing this, but rather perhaps applauded. No less an artist than Picasso, for example, when interviewed in his later career said that one of the things an artist of genius, of great technical facility, always has to guard against is lapsing into the ease of facility, of mere virtuosity for its own sake. And he has to be very careful to always set himself to new challenges. Of course, Picasso's career is testimony to his doing that. Certainly Sargent, while very different an artist from Picasso, was born with a kind of facility that is that of supreme talent. Everybody recognized that from the very first. I suspect that knowing his virtuosity and succeeding with it left him with the nagging doubt that it was too easy. The murals represented something that was much harder to accomplish for an artist like Sargent. And he welcomed the opportunity. Sargent's own view, I think, pretty clearly is that he thought them to be his greatest achievement. He says as much in so many words to more than one of his correspondents. And his early biographers, writing in the 20s just after his death, also are united in that opinion. So there doesn't seem to be too much doubt on that point." |
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