John Singer Sargent: The Complete Story
John Singer Sargent was the most dazzling portrait painter of his age, the American who painted Europe's high society with a speed and swagger that made every rival look slow. Then a single scandalous portrait, Madame X, nearly destroyed his career overnight, and at the height of his fame he simply walked away from portraits.
He could pin a person's whole character to the canvas in a few confident strokes. That gift made him rich, famous, and eventually bored.
The society machine
For decades Sargent was the portrait painter the rich and powerful queued for, in Paris, London and the United States. He caught not just a face but a posture, a glance, a whole social world, working fast and loose where others laboured. A Sargent sitting was a status symbol.
The Madame X scandal
At the 1884 Paris Salon he showed a portrait of the socialite Virginie Gautreau, pale skin against black, with one jewelled strap slipping off her shoulder. Paris was scandalized. The mockery was so fierce that he repainted the strap and left France for London. The painting he thought would crown him almost finished him.
The day he quit faces
By around 1907 Sargent was sick of what he called paughtraits and the vanity of his sitters. So he stopped, at the peak of demand, and turned to watercolor, landscape and murals instead. Few artists have ever quit a goldmine so deliberately.
The watercolors almost no one expected
Freed from clients, Sargent poured himself into thousands of watercolors: Venice in the rain, white marble quarries, friends dozing in gardens, the hulls of boats. Loose, sunlit and quick, they are some of the finest watercolors anyone has ever made, and they show a private artist behind the society star.
Gassed
The First World War pulled him back to grand statement. Sent to the front, he painted Gassed, an enormous frieze of blinded soldiers roped together, hands on the shoulders of the man ahead, stumbling past the wounded. From the painter of glittering duchesses came one of the most quietly devastating war pictures of the century.
Quick answers about John Singer Sargent
Who was John Singer Sargent? An American portrait painter, the leading society portraitist of his time.
When was he born? In Florence, Italy, in 1856, to American parents.
When did he die? In London, in 1925.
What is he famous for? The portrait Madame X and his brilliant watercolors.
Why did he stop painting portraits? He grew tired of vain sitters and wanted his freedom.
Where can I see his work? The Met in New York holds Madame X; major museums hold his watercolors.
Madame X, the picture that once drove him out of Paris, now hangs in pride of place at the Met in New York. Sargent sold it to the museum near the end of his life and called it the best thing he had ever done.