As an exhibition at Tate Britain explores the bold portraits of John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Anna Maria Barry takes a look at what the work of this celebrated society artist can tell us about the gilded world of the Edwardian elite
John Singer Sargent was the most in-demand portrait artist of his generation, though his career was not without controversy. Building his career with daring portraits of Edwardian socialites, he would later make waves for his art depicting the harrowing realities of the First World War, while his avant garde personal life remains a source of fascination.
Born to American parents in Florence in 1856, the young Sargent spent his early years travelling around Europe with his family. He showed a precocious aptitude for art, sketching and painting the many cities and landscapes they visited – from Paris to the Pyrenees.
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In 1870 Sargent started to attend drawing classes in Florence. He moved to Paris in 1874 where he entered the studio of French painter Carolus-Duran. Over the next ten years, Sargent travelled and worked, gradually building his reputation as an artist.
Scandal, success and Madame X
In 1884, scandal hit when Sargent exhibited his famous Portrait of Madame X at the Paris Salon. The sitter was Virginie Amélie Gautreau, a well-known Parisian socialite with a salacious private life. A good friend of Sargent’s, the statuesque Gautreau was a striking beauty – she accentuated her pale complexion with lavender powder, and dyed her hair red with henna.
Sargent’s daring full-length portrait captures Gautreau turning coquettishly away from the artist, so that her face is shown in profile. Her pale skin contrasts with the shimmering black dress accentuating her narrow waist and ample cleavage. While her pose was interpreted as sexually suggestive, what caused most comment was a single strap of her dress which Sargent captured slipping down over her shoulder. Gautreau appeared a mere wiggle away from exposing herself to the viewer.
The painting caused an immediate stir when it was exhibited, with many claiming it to be vulgar and deliberately provocative. Sargent eventually reworked the painting so that the offending strap no longer slipped down. He later said of the work, “I suppose it is the best thing I have ever done”. In 2024, the portrait of Madame X returned to the country for the first time in 20 years, loaned to the Tate Britain.
After the Madame X scandal, Sargent moved to London and settled on Tite Street in bohemian Chelsea. Here, his neighbours included American painter James Whistler and writer Oscar Wilde. By the 1890s, he had achieved international recognition as a portrait artist and was in demand on both sides of the Atlantic. In this period his sitters included many distinguished individuals – from wealthy industrialists and statesmen to well-known actors and writers. He became famous for his sumptuous portraits of the wealthy, capturing luxurious fabrics and sparkling jewels with his incredible technical skill. Sitting for a portrait by Sargent became the ultimate mark of distinction.
Sargent’s life: “Anything but conventional”
Sargent never married and was very private about his personal life. Many believed that he had romantic relationships with men. Indeed, the French artist Jacques-Émile Blanche, who knew Sargent, claimed his liaisons with men were “notorious in Paris, and in Venice, positively scandalous”.
Although scholars have historically been reluctant to explore this aspect of the artist’s life, it has received more attention in recent years. It has been suggested, for instance, that Sargent may have had a relationship with Thomas McKeller, an African-American model who was the subject of many of his striking nude studies. A number of Sargent’s sitters and friends are also known to have had same-sex relationships, from trailblazing suffragette and composer Ethel Smyth to his neighbour Oscar Wilde.
While we might ask what difference it makes to his art whether or not Sargent was gay, this is just one aspect of his life and career that challenges the view of the artist as a shallow society artist. Looking beneath the spectacular surface of Sargent’s portraits, we find a fascinatingly complex figure who was anything but conventional.
By 1907, Sargent had grown tired of demanding patrons and said he would no longer accept commissions. Instead, he produced charcoal sketches of his clients, which could be completed in a single sitting. He called these works ‘mugs’.
Sargent now devoted himself to landscapes, also working on a series of murals for the Boston Public Library in America (which he had started in 1890).
During the First World War, the British Government commissioned Sargent to paint a war scene which was to be the central painting for a Hall of Remembrance. His theme was meant to be Anglo-American co-operation, but instead he produced a huge oil painting depicting the aftermath of a mustard gas attack on the western front – he had travelled to the front to see the devastation for himself.
This huge, haunting picture is perhaps surprising to those who associate the artist with wealthy sitters at leisure in their finery. Gassed can be seen at the Imperial War Museum in London.
Sargent died of a heart attack in 1925 and was buried in Surrey’s Brookwood Cemetery. Even before his death, the artist’s reputation had been in decline – his Gilded Age portraits were out of step with modernism and seemed like a relic of a bygone age. Some critiqued his work as being shallow, showy and superficial.
Later in the 20th century, though, there was a revival of interest in Sargent’s work and a growing recognition for the way he had drawn upon the style of old masters like Anthony van Dyck and Diego Velázquez. A re-evaluation of Sargent’s work also shows him to be far more progressive than one might initially assume.
Sargent and fashion
The premise of the 2024 Tate Britain exhibition Sargent and Fashion explores the artist’s role as a stylist, looking at how he used clothing to construct a particular image. Featuring several of the dresses and opulent accessories that can be seen in Sargent’s portraits, the exhibition reunites these items with the paintings for the first time.
A particular highlight is a room devoted to Sargent’s portraits of performers, where visitors can marvel at his dramatic portrait of celebrated actor Ellen Terry. He immortalised Terry in the role of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, wearing an emerald green dress embroidered with hundreds of iridescent beetle wings. Sargent’s portrait is displayed alongside the dress itself, loaned for the first time by the National Trust.
One fascinating section of the exhibition looks at how the artist was drawn to sitters who subverted gender roles. One example is his portrait of close friend Violet Paget, better known as the writer Vernon Lee – she chose a name that was deliberately androgynous. Sargent painted Lee in the masculine clothing she favoured. Like several other women in Sargent’s circle, Lee had romantic relationships with women.
In the same room as Vernon Lee is Sargent’s 1881 portrait Dr Pozzi at Home. The sitter was a renowned surgeon who was something of a dandy – Sargent painted him in a flamboyant red dressing gown and Turkish slippers, an unconventional choice and a bold aesthetic statement. When it was displayed at the Royal Academy, Vernon Lee said the portrait of Pozzi had “an insolent kind of magnificence, more or less kicking other people’s pictures to bits”. Visitors to the Tate Britain, who will see Pozzi displayed among many pieces that testify to Sargent’s subversive work and revised reputation, might find a similar effect today.
Edwardian Entertainment
Want to delve a little deeper into the world of the Edwardian elite? Here are some recommendations
The Gilded Age (2022–)
Julian Fellowes’ HBO drama exploring the opulence of New York society in the 1880s has been renewed for a third season. Capturing the world in which Sargent moved – there is even a cameo from Oscar Wilde – eagle-eyed viewers may even notice some of the costumes directly influenced by his portraits.
Vita Sackville-West’s The Edwardians (1930)
This novel by English author and garden designer Sackville-West captures (and critiques) the glittering social whirl at an aristocratic Edwardian estate. Sackville-West was very familiar with this elite world, having grown up at Knole in Kent – her grand family estate, now managed by the National Trust. Sargent knew her family.
The Sound of John Singer Sargent
Sargent was mad about music and had considerable musical talent himself. The team at the Tate has compiled a Spotify playlist of music that inspired the artist which provides the perfect soundtrack to the new exhibition. It includes music by some of the many composers who sat for Sargent.
‘Sargent and Fashion’ is now open at the Tate Britain. It runs until 7 July 2024
Dr Anna Maria Barry is a writer and historian who specialises in Victorian and Edwardian culture