John Singer Sargent exhibition in New York charts the star portraitist’s rise

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is justifiably known for his renditions of beautiful belle époque socialites. “To have been painted by [Sargent] added distinction to the most distinguished,” wrote one critic in a 1925 obituary. But before he became the hottest portrait painter in France – and eventually the UK and the US – Sargent had to establish himself as both a member of the cultural elite and a painter of unmatched talent. The only place to do that, in his mind at least, was the Paris Salon. When Sargent first arrived in Paris, he was an ambitious unknown. “He gets to Paris, he enrols in art lessons, he is young and energetic and really establishes himself in different circles,” says Stephanie Herdrich, the Alice Pratt Brown curator of American painting and drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and co-curator of “Sargent and Paris”, a sweeping new show at the museum. Herdrich explains that Sargent quickly figured out how to make his work stand out at the Paris Salon, the juried forum where thousands of artists – both unknown and famous – would hang new work. “And that’s really the main venue where he’s intent on establishing himself, where he has so much exposure. And pretty quickly he realises he has to be gold to get his paintings noticed among the thousands of others.” The Met show contains about 100 artworks and runs from April 27 to August 3, after which it travels to Paris’ Musée d’Orsay in September. It is the first exhibition to look at the period in-depth, according to Herdrich. “No one had really thoroughly taken on his early years in Paris, which to me is such a special, unique, ambitious moment in his career,” she says. “The centrality of Paris to his development, and to his whole career as a foundation, is a really rich topic, and the works of art are incredible – among the best he makes in his career.” Sargent, who was 18 when he arrived in Paris in 1874, was born to American parents in Europe and lived an itinerant life across the continent, never visiting the US. Already a talented draftsman, he came to Paris with the explicit goal of becoming an established artist. After first enrolling in a studio run by a fashionable portrait painter, a “students’ atelier”, he quickly struck up friendships with other artists and expatriates. “He comes to Paris very well prepared to start his career, and he polishes off his artistic training,” Herdrich says. “He’s been practising drawings since he’s a child.” Just three years later, he exhibited his first painting at the Salon in 1877, a portrait of a family friend. It earned mentions by critics but was not widely discussed. He kept at it. “People start noticing his paintings little by little,” Herdrich says. “And as he gets bolder much more quickly, he’s really getting recognition. And he understands how to push at the edges of the genre.” In real terms, Herdrich says, the artist’s subtle boundary-pushing entailed a virtuosic interplay between the modern and the traditional. Take, she suggests, his 1879 portrait of Marie Buloz Pailleron, which he submitted to the Salon in 1880. The wife of a famous playwright, Pailleron is depicted outside on a breezy summer day in a park on her parents’ estate. She is wearing a richly detailed black dress, which contrasts with the loose foliage and grass around her. “It’s such a blend of modern impulses and impressionism, against the green lawn and the high vantage point, but then this very flattering aspect, and the attention to the details of her dress,” Herdrich says. These formal innovations were not lost on critics – one said Sargent was “among those who stand alongside Impressionism”. In this way, Herdrich says, “It’s pushing at the edges of the genre and moving it forward, which is appealing to patrons.” That appeal, she continues, was the key to Sargent’s fortunes at the time. “Portraiture is becoming much more important to society,” she says. “The ability to make your way in Paris through money or appearance makes it much more fluid. And these are a lot of his early patrons as well: people who have a similar ambition as the young artist for recognition.” By establishing himself as an acceptable, and flattering, member of the avant-garde, he attracted support from people who were also on the make and saw what he could do for them. “Validating his work is validating their status as well,” Herdrich says. The show culminates with what is arguably Sargent’s most famous picture, a full-length portrait of an American-born socialite of French descent, Virginie Amélie Gautreau, known to this day as “Madame X”. Executed mostly over the course of the spring and summer of 1883, the painting depicts Gautreau in a black dress with a satin skirt and velvet bodice, adorned with jewelled straps. When the painting was first displayed, at the Salon of 1884, one strap had slipped from Gautreau’s shoulder and her body was contorted slightly away from the viewer, rendering her face in profile. The errant strap had the intended effect of drawing vast crowds. The painting’s reputation for causing a scandal that “ruined” Gautreau and forced Sargent out of the country – he moved to London soon after – has survived to this day. “There’s always been an arc of the Madame X story that’s popularly known,” Herdrich says. But the exhibition, she continues, complicates that story, adding agency to Gautreau’s participation. “The idea that she was ruined by the portrait? We know now that she was out and about in Paris within two weeks, wearing, if not the same dress, a very similar dress,” she says. “And the idea that Sergeant fled to London in shame? That’s also not true. He was considering moving to London before he showed Madame X at the Salon.” At the close of the Salon, the artist repainted the strap, fixing it in a more proper position. He kept it in his studio and did not display it publicly for more than 20 years. The show ends with images Sargent created in the immediate aftermath of the scandal. “We hope people will then visit the American Wing and see his later work,” Herdrich says. “But the idea of thinking about Madame X as a culmination of his time in Paris, and ending with that, and looking at what leads up to it, seemed very natural.” The end goal, she says, was “to show not only the great exhibition pieces, but also give the backstory to those works, to look at his student work, to look at how he learns to paint the way that he experiments in Paris.”

John Singer Sargent exhibition in New York charts the star portraitist’s rise

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The show at New York’s Met covers Sargent’s journey to becoming the hottest portrait painter in Paris, and includes his infamous Madame X

The show at New York’s Met covers Sargent’s journey to becoming the hottest portrait painter in Paris, and includes his infamous Madame X