John Singer Sargent Essay Example

famous writer of the time and friend of Sargent described his work as generating "the slightly 'uncanny' spectacle of a talent which on the very threshold of its career has nothing more to learn. " (Meisler 69) Three years later Sargent's success in the Paris art world came to an abrupt end.He painted an American divorcee, Virginie Gautreau, who had married a wealthy Frenchman. He scandalized the salon with this portrait. The painting came to be known as Madame X. One of the nouveau riche, Gautreau was not very respected by society.

The way that Sargent portrayed her---in a low-cut gown with the shoulder strap falling down her arm---did nothing to help people's perception of her. Paris was shocked. One critic wrote, "Never have we seen such a downfall of an artist who once seemed to excite so many expectations. " (Meisler 72) Without commission prospects, Sargent was forced to leave France.

The people's reactions to Sargent's work say a great deal about the time period. Madame Gautreau is presented as the type of woman that was then called a "professional beauty". Although she has the dress and attitude of a woman of class, her pose, her make-up, and the fallen strap of her gown suggest that she is not posing, but instead working. In her book Interpreting Sargent, Elizabeth Prettejohn compares Madame X to Mlle de Lancey by Carolus, Sargent's former teacher. She says, "..

. Gautreau appears self-consciously to pose herself, while de Lancey seems to be posed.Carolus's sitter appears relaxed and at leisure, but Gautreau is at work. " (Prettejohn 27) This was all too much for Parisian society. Sargent seemed to be mocking

them. Even Gautreau herself acted outraged and asked that the painting be removed from the salon.

Sargent did repaint the strap of Gautreau's gown, but everything else stayed the same. Years later, when he sold the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he said that it was probably the best work he had ever done. Today, a scandal means welcome publicity for an artist, but in Sargent's day, it did nothing for his career.He knew that he would not be receiving any commissions in Paris, and he moved to London looking for work. Sargent never really enjoyed doing portraits.

All his life he complained about having to paint them, calling them "paughtraits. " He enjoyed his commissions to do murals such as those in the Boston Public Library. He wanted to be remembered for this type of work rather than for his portraits, but this would not happen. When he first went to England, Sargent painted people who had recently made their fortunes. The Misses Vickers is painted simply.

Their father had made his money in an engineering firm.The setting is not very luxurious even though the composition of three sisters painted together tries to imitate the style of high-classed eighteenth century portraiture. Sargent's first portrait of a real member of the aristocracy was Lady Agnew of Lochnaw . After breaking into the upper class market with this painting, he painted another group of three sisters. The Wyndham Sisters is much more luxurious than The Misses Vickers. The third group of three sisters painted by Sargent, The Acheson Sisters, is even more luxurious and shows them picking oranges off a tree

in an urn.

This almost useless activity emphasizes the fact that they are not required to really do anything. A well-known economist of the day named Thorstein Veblen had just published a book about the upper classes. Prettejohn mentions in Interpreting Sargent that, "According to Veblen, the upper class signaled its economic power over the working masses not simply by indolence but by the pursuit of activities 'conspicuous' for their failure to result in any product. " (Prettejohn 35). The world at the end of the nineteenth century was changing.

Old money had become new money. Industrialization had made millionaires but it had also created a large group of poor working class people. Sargent, having grown up in a cosmopolitan, sheltered world was adept at painting the well-to-do. His life and his work reflect the world of the privileged of his time, and it is a very one-sided portrayal.

However, he does show us some of the variations within the high society that he painted. The differences between paintings such as The Misses Vickers and The Wyndham Sisters have already been mentioned.Besides dealing with the class differences within the world of the rich, Sargent successfully showed its cultural and racial variations. He painted Americans, particularly American women, very differently then the British.

Sargent seemed to capture the energy as well as the dynamic personalities of his American sitters. The symmetrical composition of his portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner was unlike any of his other portraits. Elizabeth Prettejohn points out, "..

. the equally symmetrical gold textile forming a halo behind her, creates what might be called an icon of female power...

Her self-contained pose suggests controlled and focused dynamism.

" (Prettejohn 55) Americans were positioned in natural, relaxed poses rather then stiff conservative ones that were reminiscent of eighteenth century portraiture. The portrait Mrs. Edward L. Davis and her son Livingston Davis shows not only wealth but also a comfortable relationship between a mother and son.

This is in direct contrast to the isolating distance between the sitters in the British portrait Mrs. Carl Meyer and her Children. The portrait Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes is a truly American portrait.

In it, Mrs. Stokes is dressed in everyday attire. She commands the attention of the viewer by dominating the composition of the portrait. Her husband, while present, is almost hidden in the background shadows.

"The portrait makes a powerful image of the American New Woman, striding confidently forward from a background of quiet male authority, not yet forgotten but already subsiding into shadow. " (Prettejohn 58) The opulent settings of Sargent's British portraits are absent in his American commissions. These portraits focus instead on the personality of the sitter.There is simplicity and a newness in these paintings that seems appropriate.

Sargent was effective in capturing the spirit and vitality of the new nation. Another group that Sargent approached in a somewhat different way was his Jewish clientele. It is hard to believe that he received criticism for painting these subjects in a sympathetic way. However, once again the public's response to his work said a great deal about the climate of the times. Britain was not only conservative.

It was anti-Semitic. Asher Wertheimer, who was a friend as well as a client is portrayed by Sargent as the wealthy Jewish businessman that he

was.To the viewer today, his Jewishness is not apparent, but according to Elizabeth Prettejohn, "Wertheimer's expansive gesture with the cigar, the suggestion of well-fed rotundity under the expensive suit of clothes, and the penetrating glance create a character that was instantly recognizable to contemporaries as Jewish, prosperous and businesslike. " (Prettejohn 40).

Sargent's painting is not in any way a caricature. It is realistic. However, he did soften Wertheimer's features by painting him face-on and with a mustache.It was probably the combination of realism and flattery that disturbed British society. They were even more angered years later when Wertheimer gave nine of the twelve portraits that Sargent had done of his family to the Tate Gallery in London. They were put on display in their own secluded room, but only for a while.

They were ultimately put away and have hardly been shown since. In 1919, Sargent encountered controversy while painting a public mural in Boston. He was accused of making the painting too Christian, and Jewish organizations called for its removal.The irony of this situation is that Sargent had often been criticized for being too sympathetic to his Jewish portrait clientele in the way that he supposedly improved their appearances artistically and fraternized with them socially.

Even though he was involved with people of power and wealth, Sargent had very little understanding of politics. When World War I broke out, he was in Austria and was trapped. It took him four months to get back to England. In 1918 he was commissioned by the British Ministry of Information to paint war pictures at the Western front. Gassed is a 20-foot-long mural that shows soldiers

who are victims of a mustard gas attack on their way to the medical station to be treated.

By this time Sargent had stopped painting portraits. He stated, "No more paughtraits!... I abhor and abjure them and hope never to do another especially of the Upper Classes.

(Olson 228) Sargent had never enjoyed doing portraits, but it is easy to understand why, after being exposed to war and painting a mural like Gassed, he could no longer be inspired to paint the kind of ostentatious wealth that they represented. After the war Sargent worked on murals for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Boston Public Library. He hoped that he would be remembered for these paintings instead of his portraits. He would be unhappy to know that has not happened. Sargent died while he was working on these murals.

In 1926, the year after his death, a large retrospective exposition of his work was held in London.It was not very well received. Sargent's portraits seemed a little vulgar in light of economic conditions in the post-war world. Abstract painting was gaining recognition, making his realistic work seem dated. The critic Roger Fry was particularly unkind.

He had approached Sargent on the subject of abstract art and had been treated rudely. He commented on Sargent's work, "Wonderful indeed, but most wonderful that this wonderful performance should ever have been confused with that of an artist. " (Prettejohn 73). Fry thought that Sargent's work did nothing more than capture the likeness of his sitters. The Jewish portraits were also disliked.

The mood of anti-Semitism was stronger now than it had been when the paintings were originally done.

Sargent fell from favor and his talent was generally unappreciated for many years. His work was thought of as trivial and purely representational. "..

. over the years critics have contended that his work was too facile, aristocratic and superficial to stand the test of time. " (May 1) This could not be further from the truth. Although Sargent's work was realistic it was really quite avant-garde. Unlike the almost photorealistic portraiture of his predecessors, his style was loose and even impressionistic.

For example, an oriental rug painted by Sargent might look messy and unclear up close, but at a distance the looseness of his brushstrokes blends together to capture not just the colors and patterns of the rug but also it's depth and texture: "In contrast to the uninflected paint surfaces of French-derived Neoclassical artists, Sargent's glittering surface effects and painterly virtuosity exemplified the English and German tradition of society portraiture. Artists such as Cecilia Beaux...

took their cue from Sargent's bravura brushwork and animated surfaces. " (Haskell 13)Whatever critics may have said about Sargent, they were all in agreement about his technique... it was masterful. The camera produces the most literal form of representation, but no photos could capture what Sargent did in his portraits.

In them he embodied an entire era. "... far from endorsing a status quo, Sargent's portraits dramatized the precarious glamour of an upper class in rapid transition.

" (Prettejohn 7) They managed to freeze a fleeting moment in time. Because of Sargent we have a much greater understanding of the world of one hundred years ago. His portraits are historical studies in human nature.