These are the 12 most famous paintings by John Singer Sargent, who was the leading American portrait painter of the Edwardian era (1901-1910). Sargent created around 900 paintings, more than 2,000 watercolors, sketches, and charcoal drawings. His international reputation as a portraitist reached its peak in the late 1890s as he painted many famous personalities, artists, art dealers, and actresses.
Biography of John Singer Sargent
Life
Sargent was born in Florence, to an Italian mother and an American father. In his twenties, he interacted with the Parisian Impressionists (studying under Carolus-Duran) and traveled to Madrid to study Velázquez, and to Haarlem (Netherlands) to see the work of Frans Hals. It is from these artists, and from his study of the great masters at the Louvre, that he derived his brushstroke technique.
All throughout his life, John Singer Sargent sought out travel. Born in Italy and soon moved to America, he lived first in Paris and then London; his voyaging took him across the American Midwest, where he lived for long spells, and to Morocco and the Holy Land. In his French and English sojourns in particular he made great use of the greenery of nature for his settings. This typical Impressionist choice was dictated by a precious feeling for light and color, and it meant that some of his most celebrated works (such as Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose) required unspeakable hours of labor, preparation, and waiting, followed by short minutes of frenzy until the natural conditions changed again.
Madame X scandal
Portraiture gave him both his midlife triumph and the reputational disaster that preceded it. The unfortunate case of Madame X, a depiction of a Parisian beau in an elegant charcoal dress, shown to the public at the Salon of 1884, made him abandon France, ostensibly ruined the life of his young subject, and even made him revise his painting in order to move one crucial strap closer to the collarbone. The piece was widely understood as a depiction of an adulteress, because of the seductive air about Madame X’s (Madame Gautreau’s) bare shoulders and her own sensuous reputation. When he finally sold it to the Metropolitan in 1916, Sargent was still requesting that its naming preserve an illusion of anonymity.
It will be noted how John Singer Sargent’s case somewhat mimics the cultural shock of eighteen years before when Édouard Manet first showed his Olympia. In that case too the promiscuous reputation of a woman whom the Parisian public could easily recognize prevented among many the proper reception of the painting as an evocation of myth in the unexalted humanity of the present day. In Manet’s painting, the public was distressed to be confronted brazenly by what was for them sheer immorality. Olympia, indeed, stared them contentedly in the eyes.
Yet Manet, two decades prior, suffered none of the simply disastrous consequences that appear to have befallen Sargent immediately.
Triumph and “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose”
By studiously avoiding controversy for the rest of his life (and indeed most artistic eccentricity), Sargent found his fortune in dainty portraits of innocence and warmth. Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose of 1886 is a resplendent example: two little girls (an English friend’s daughters) in the tall grass of a garden lighting Japanese lamps. The unobtrusive sunlight leaves the angelic figures of the girls — white frocks, short hair of dark hay — the lighted lanterns in their hands, and the blossomed lilies around them, to shine on their own. The enchanting sense of movement in the picture is due to the reflections of color from one object to the other: the shadows of green on the girls’ dresses and hair in particular.
This reorientation signified, for John Singer Sargent, true popularity after several harrowing years of infamy. Artistically, it signaled an artist discovering a safe haven. Sargent’s broad brushstrokes, which had pocked (in his critics’ words) his French works with impressions of porcelain artificiality, finally found proper scope for their effusiveness. And the sense of the accidental capture of a moment, with the color vibrant all around and the human figure at the center, enabled Sargent to go on to accomplish portraits of high society and friends which shine before our eyes today like retouched phone-camera pictures on the move.
This reorientation signified, for John Singer Sargent, true popularity after several harrowing years of infamy. Artistically, it signaled an artist discovering a safe haven. Sargent’s broad brushstrokes, which had pocked (in his critics’ words) his French works with impressions of porcelain artificiality, finally found proper scope for their effusiveness. And the sense of the accidental capture of a moment, with the color vibrant all around and the human figure at the center, enabled Sargent to go on to accomplish portraits of high society and friends which shine before our eyes today like retouched phone-camera pictures on the move.
It must be kept in mind that Sargent became, through the late 1880s and the 1890s, the premier portraitist of Edwardian society in London. A fashion for his portraits led a multitude of aristocrats and celebrities to pay the equivalent of thousands of pounds to have their pictures on the canvas.
By predictable contrast, Sargent was often regarded by the world of art as a relic of Realism, just like Impressionism itself came to be regarded by the end of the 19th century. On such grounds and on the accusation that he was a mere illustrator, Sargent suffered the antipathy of Continental art critics as well as of the Bloomsbury Group.
In an almost private capacity, Sargent continued producing watercolors of the scenes of life that he saw in his voyages across Europe, America, and the Arab countries. They are a less remarked-upon part of his opus, despite their technical excellence and the way they continue his personal narrative of dream-like places, all of which glow with a characteristic affection.
Later Life
In the 1910s Sargent pursued a project of mural paintings in Chicago, where he had temporarily settled again. Their theme was the progress of religion from polytheism to Christianity, they involved some stereotypical depictions of Judaism which were criticized in the city as antisemitic. Although his imagery in this case seems to be above all an attempt at citing medieval precedents, this last controversy of his life caused him to eventually leave the project uncompleted. In a sort of paradox, Sargent had in the past been noted by society as a philosemite of sorts because of his many Jewish contacts.
John Singer Sargent was in many respects a socialite as well as a traveller. He cultivated friendships with French and American artists and enjoyed, usually in the capacity of the famous portraitist, the company of highly eminent people, such as King Edward VII. Interest in his life and relationships has renewed in more recent times because of the critics’ discovery of his apparent homosexuality.
Portrait of Madame X (1884)
This is one of the most famous paintings by John Singer Sargent if not his best-known painting. It is a portrait of Madame Gaureau, at that time, a famous Parisian beauty. The critics of the end of the 19th century found it erotic and eccentric, as it appeared at the Paris Salon under the title Portrait de Mme*** and was forced to overpaint the subject’s shoulder strap, raise it up, and make it look fastened.
One French critic wrote that if one stood before the portrait during its exhibition in the Salon, one “would hear every curse word in the French language”. The young woman depicted, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau is standing in a coquettish pose, revealing a dark dress that was too provoking to the French audience. Today, there are also known multiple watercolor and graphite figure studies of this painting.
Street in Venice (1882)
A series of paintings depicting the daily labors of the Venetian working class was done by Sargent. This oil on wood painting was done in a post-impressionist manner and is set near the Grand Canal in Venice, in the street of the Calle Larga dei Proverbi. The woman depicted on the left is walking, kicking her skirt with her foot, and is being observed by the two men standing in the shadows to her right. Her eyes are looking at the ground, and it seems like she is in a hurry, trying to flee the male glare.
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (1893)
This painting shows the confident look of Lady Agnew, who became a celebrity after this painting was done, in a very spontaneous and relaxed posture, which was extremely unusual in contemporary portraiture. The critics describe her direct gaze as “quietly challenging” and she is dressed in a soft, white gown with silk.
El Jaleo (Spanish Dancer) (1882)
In 1879 the artist traveled to Madrid to study the works of a baroque painter, Diego Velázquez. El Jaleo is a painting depicting a Gypsy dancer and musicians. As in his other works, the work was preceded by a series of preliminary studies, focusing precisely on the dancer’s moving posture. This painting is the most theatrical of his early major works, and it seems like it lacks a barrier between the observer and the dancer, creating an illusion that the dance is happening right in front of our very eyes.
Vernon Lee (1881)
Vernon Lee was a pseudonym of Violet Paget, a writer best known for her books on Italian art and supernatural fiction. Sargent and Paget had known each other since childhood because their families have been neighbors in Nice, France. This portrait was painted in a single session that lasted three hours, and he wrote a dedication to her “to my friend Violet”.
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882)
This painting depicts four young girls, daughters of Edward Darley Boit, in their Parisian apartment and it is described as the most psychologically compelling painting of Sargent’s career. The dark interior space and composition that was unusual for a group portrait, remind us of Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas, which Sargent did copies of.
Theodore Roosevelt (1903)
The 26th President of the United States, oftentimes called Teddy Roosevelt, invited Sargent to the White House for a week to do a portrait of him. The pose of the President was completely spontaneous, and Sargent thought that painting him in this stance, with a hand on the newel was perfect. Roosevelt considered the portrait a complete success and liked it immensely.
The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy (1907)
In 1907 Sargent painted a very lively work that captures the transition between landscape and portraiture. The couple depicted are Wilfrid and Jane Emmet de Glehn, Sargent’s traveling companions and professional artists of that time.
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (1889)
This oil painting shows a famous actress Ellen Terry during a performance as Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth. The leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th century, Ellen, is depicted as a redhead, wearing a green and blue dress decorated with iridescent beetle wings, made by Ada Netlleship, a British designer. The subject is standing, white-faced, holding King Duncan’s crown above her head.
Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner (1888)
Isabella was posing for Sargent during his visit to Boston in 1888. This painting was also titled Woman: An Enigma and Miss Gardner was asked by her husband not to publicly show the portrait while he was alive. With her straightforward pose and the direct gaze into the eyes of the viewer, she is standing in a very dominant, commanding pose. Her back is set against a Venetian motif background, which is giving the appearance of a haloed icon.
Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood (1885)
Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood remained in Sargent’s studio until his death, along with several works by Monet that he collected over the years. Monet is depicted sitting at an easel painting outdoors. This painting is extremely important for the Impressionist era as it shows the French artist doing what he advocated – painting from nature itself, and as it held a great personal significance for Sargent, it is a symbol of the artistic relationship.
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1886)
During a boating expedition on the Thames in the autumn of 1885, Sargent saw Chinese lanterns hanging among the trees and had an inspiration for this painting. At the time, he began painting it during his stay at the home of the painter F.D. Millet in Worcestershire (UK), and at first, he used his five-year-old daughter Katharine as his model. But she was replaced by Polly (on the right) and Dolly (on the left), daughters of the illustrator Barnard, as they had the exact hair color Sargent was seeking.
The title of the painting comes from the song “The Wreath” by the 18th-century composer of operas called Joseph Mazzinghi, which was often sung by Sargent and his circle around the piano at Broadway.
What famous paintings by John Singer Sargent do you think we should add to this list? Comment below.