John Singer Sargent in Paris

Boston Globe

02-05-2025

If that doesn't sound like the Sargent you know, well, join the club. Boston adopted Sargent at the apex of his most successful moment in the late 19th century as the most sought-after portraitist of the very rich. They were, in many ways, made for each other: In the rush of Modernity that would bring seismic change to the art world, Boston and Sargent both would largely choose to take a pass.
John Singer Sargent, 'In the Luxembourg Gardens,' 1879.
John Singer Sargent/Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917 (Cat. 1080)
At the end of his career, Boston gave Sargent a legacy commission in the
When they were finished in 1925, their softly Baroque aesthetic was hopelessly outdated amid the shock of the new, embodied by young turks like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Thus, the Sargent era ended not with a bang, but a whimper: In a tragic, ironic turn, Sargent himself had died just months before they were unveiled.
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Boston's most enduring Sargent presence, to me, serves as meek epitaph to a towering talent.
'Sargent & Paris,' by contrast,
is an energizing prologue. It begins in 1874, when an 18-year-old Sargent, born and raised in Italy by American parents, first arrived in the French capital. Change was in the air: The Franco-Prussian War had ended in humiliating defeat for the French in 1871, and the
Amid the tumult, challenges to the established order were everywhere, not least of which in France's stiffly traditionalist academic art world. The year he arrived,
Installation view of "Sargent and Paris," at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; "Madame X," one of his most famous works, is at the center.
Hyla Skopitz, courtesy of The Met
Sargent had arrived right on time. By the third Impressionist show of 1876, the movement had gained momentum, and Sargent had become energized by its brio — so much so that he sought out Monet and kindled a friendship that would last to the end of his life. (One of his paintings here, 'In the Luxembourg Gardens,' 1879, is fitted with a smouldering sun mired in a muck of purple fog that reads as a clear homage to Monet's 'Impression, Sunrise,' 1872.)
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Studying in the studio of Carolus-Duran, a leading portraitist, the young Sargent's talents were catalyzed by his mentor's unconventional guidance. Against tradition, he urged students to paint without preparatory sketches — to let instinct, moment, and paint itself guide them, a thoroughly modern notion. The immediacy Sargent captured explodes from his early works on view here. Two paintings of the Pasdeloup orchestra at the Cirque d'Hiver seem almost to be in motion, dizzyingly kinetic despite their dun palette, flecked with bursts of bright color. In 'Head of a Male Model,' 1878, a halo of ebullient swipes of bright paint frame his subject, an eruption of spontaneous painterly brilliance.
But Sargent was also enraptured by the old-guard authority that emanated from the Salon, a bastion of art history. His reluctance to ally with full-blooded revolution would create a tension that shaded the rest of his career. Sargent's painting life reads as a constant
push-pull between innovation and traditionalism.
Alongside his painterly experiments, he aspired to achieve the polish demanded by the French Academy; he achieved it
with his portrait of Carolus-Duran, which was accepted to the Salon in 1878 and first gained him acclaim. With it, critics wrote, the student had surpassed the teacher.
John Singer Sargent's 'Fumée d'ambre gris (Smoke of Ambergris),' 1880.
John Singer Sargent/Courtesy of the Clark Art Institute, Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Had he, though? That portrait is a little too polished, too perfect, at least for my liking. It feels a little lifeless next to the verve of his bracingly spontaneous works of the same time. This is the thing with Sargent: I've never been as impressed by a painter's talents, and as frustrated by what he did with them. That's why starting from the beginning is so refreshing.
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Sargent cemented his reputation as a portraitist of a trans-Atlantic high society, in London, in Boston, and in New York, which eventually made him the most sought-after portraitist of the elite of his time. This much, we know.
catalog of high society subjects predicated on the artist's love of — and mesmerizing skill for — painting the fancy dress of the elite, it was an indulgent showcase
for where Sargent's
extravagant talents ultimately led him, to his perch as the torch bearer of a bygone era.
It was partly why Boston loved him so. But it
would be foolish to assail his gifts, which are supreme. He could find a universe in a bolt of fabric, a parallel reality of light and shadow in a fold of a bejeweled frock. He was just
that good
. But 'Sargent & Paris' prompts, more than anything, a tantalizing 'what if,' and then indulges that tease.
John Singer Sargent, "Venetian Interior," c. 1880- 1882.
Carnegie Museum of Art/Art Resource
In 1878, the young Sargent set out to paint further afield, on the French coast, in Italy, in Spain, and Morocco, exulting in his powers. Some of the works from that time are on view here, so frank and immediate as to stop your heart. The artist's intuitive eye
is on full display: The shimmer of light in 'Staircase in Capri,' 1878, a narrow slip of whitewashed stone steps cleaved by shadow and sun; 'Atlantic Sunset,' 1876, a riot of pink and purple, sun and cloud jostling for supremacy in loose and joyful smears of paint; 'Among the Olive Trees, Capri,' 1878, of a girl in a long dress slumped against a broken bough, with thick leaves dissolving into sky above a golden meadow brushed into being with vigorous, stabbing strokes.
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Sargent's observational gifts are almost as powerful as his painterly ones. In these stolen moments, they live in breathless harmony. But not long after, the show takes a sharp turn into more familiar terrain, as Sargent's burgeoning talents deliver to him the patronage that would define him.
There's much to be said about some of those pictures — and some, more than others. 'The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,' an MFA staple from 1882, is here. In the austere space it occupies with dark-painted walls, it never looked better; atmospheric, brooding, and cloaked in shadow, it fuses the artist's urge toward narrative mystery with his eagerness to please. Modeled after Velazquez's 'Las Meninas,' the painting captures the children of prominent Boston Brahmins, then living in Paris, in a moody wash of pale light; with its enigmatic beauty, the piece serves the artist at least as much as the patron.
John Singer Sargent, 'Claude Monet, painting, by the edge of a wood,' 1885. (Tate)
John Singer Sargent/Presented by Miss Emily Sargent and Mrs Ormond through the Art Fund 1925
Would that it were more often so. I find so many of Sargent's portraits wearily overwrought, theatrical and almost silly (the lavish crimson affection of 'Dr. Pozzi at Home,' 1881, its subject in a regal, turgid pose amid a sea of red velvet, always makes me cringe). I don't have much more regard for 'Madame X,' risqué only in the context of polite Parisian society, while the less polite Impressionist cadre were far more compelling (as are so many of Sargent's own works).
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So, even though it serves as the show's kicker, I prefer another way out. In 1885, Sargent painted 'Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood,' a lovingly loose tribute to his great friend's naturalistic urges to capture the world simply as he chose to see it.
It seems painted almost in minutes, intuitively, joyfully. The contrast with his prim, practiced portraiture all but causes me physical pain. Sargent by then had ingratiated himself to an A-list of portrait clients and indulged in their lavish worlds. Monet, meanwhile, had left Paris for Giverny, brushing off his own growing popularity — and market — to keep pushing himself into new terrain to the very end of his life.
'One is too much taken up,' Monet once said, 'with what one sees and hears in Paris.' For Sargent, though, Paris was everything, a longing that never left him. After moving to London in 1886
to pursue portrait commissions, a conservative high society client list prompted him to sand down the edges of his Parisian sensibilities. Too avant-garde,
But the path not taken haunted him: 'My heart is set on not being forgotten in Paris,' he told Monet. As he drifted into the louche comforts of a wealthy world, and finally into irrelevance, it made all the difference. What if, indeed.
SARGENT & PARIS
Through Aug. 3. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York. 212-535-7710
Murray Whyte can be reached at