(b Florence, 12 Jan 1856; d London, 25 April 1925). American painter and draughtsman, active in England. The most fashionable portrait painter working in England and the USA in the late 19th century, he was brought up by expatriate American parents in an environment of restless travel and insulated family life. He was cosmopolitan in outlook, a linguist, a fine pianist and an avid reader of the classics. The spirit of self-sufficiency and isolation, both physical and emotional, remained with him all his life. He never married, grew wary of emotional entanglements and remained closest to his sisters, especially the eldest, Emily.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

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John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was America's most technically brilliant portrait painter. His work profoundly influenced his generation.

Born on Jan. 20, 1856, in Florence, Italy, of American parents, John Singer Sargent spent the greater part of his life in Europe but made frequent short visits to the United States. His father was a doctor from Gloucester, Mass.; his mother, who came from Philadelphia, preferred Continental life and persuaded her husband to give up his medical practice. Sargent was a born artist, very precocious, and fortunate in having his mother's encouragement. At the age of 9 he was sketching animals at the Paris Zoo. In 1868-1869 he worked in the studio of Carl Welsch in Rome, then attended school in Florence and took courses at the Accademia delle Belle Arti.

In 1874 the family settled in Paris, and Sargent worked at the École des Beaux-Arts, but in October he entered the studio of Carolus-Duran, a skillful portrait painter. In 1876 Sargent made his first trip to America, to establish his American citizenship. In 1877 he exhibited a portrait of Miss Watts, his first appearance at the Paris Salon. After an early period of realism he went through an impressionist phase, as seen in the two versions of Luxembourg Gardens at Twilight (1879). His most brilliant early portrait was of Mrs. Charles Gifford Dyer (1880). The tragic beauty of the face shows the artist's intuitive faculties. The Pailleron Children (1880) shows great sophistication and an almost Jamesian sinisterness. His great early success, more liked by fellow artists than by critics, was the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, shown at the Salon of 1883. Four little girls are placed asymmetrically in a composition as remarkable for its subtle balances as for its luminous effect.

Sargent's most daring and brilliant portrait, known as Madame X, was of Madame Gautreau, one of the most elegant and fashion-conscious beauties of Parisian society. He painted her standing, wearing an extremely lowcut evening gown, and he made effective use of the contrast of her white skin with the black dress. When the picture was shown at the Salon of 1884, the public as well as her family were shocked, and Sargent was forced to withdraw it. Largely because of this, he left Paris and established himself in London, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In the mid-1880s Sargent painted two portraits of Robert Louis Stevenson, both brilliant, spontaneous, and sensitive portrayals of this frail and talented man. In 1887 Sargent went to America to paint the Marquands and a stark and commanding portrait of the austere matriarch Mrs. Adrian Iselin. By 1890 he was so firmly established that all the peeresses and notables of England clamored for the privilege of having him do their portraits. In 1898 Asher Wertheimer, a famous London art dealer, commissioned him to paint all the members of his family. One of the finest of this group is the portrait of Mrs. Wertheimer, which is elegant and impervious but facile and penetrating. His portrait of the great beauty Lady Sassoon, dressed in the highest fashion, is sparkling and vivacious and a technical tour de force. Although he painted men less often than women, one of his most dashing achievements was of Lord Ribblesdale in riding costume. The Duchess of Devonshire, the Duchess of Sutherland, the Countess of Warwick, and dozens of others were all painted with the same facile elegance. He also did groups such as the Marlborough family, the Sitwell family, and the Wyndham sisters.

Some of Sargent's greatest accomplishments were in watercolor, which he undertook mostly during summer trips to the Tirol, Italy, and Spain. These works are transparent, luminous, and brilliantly executed. In 1890 he was commissioned to do murals for the Boston Public Library (completed in 1916), the finest of which is the series of prophets. In 1916 he executed murals for the rotunda of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He died in London on April 15, 1925.

Further Reading

Biographies of Sargent include W. H. Downes, John S. Sargent (1925); Frederick A. Sweet, Sargent, Whistler and Mary Cassatt (1954); and Charles Merrill Mount, John Singer Sargent (1955). See also David McKibbin, Sargent's Boston (1956).

Additional Sources

Fairbrother, Trevor J., John Singer Sargent, New York: Abrams, 1994.

Olson, Stanley, John Singer Sargent, his portrait, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986.

Ratcliff, Carter, John Singer Sargent, New York: Abbeville Press, 1982.

Weinberg, H. Barbara (Helene Barbara), John Singer Sargent, New York: Rizzoli International: Distributed by St. Martin's Press, 1994.

For more information on John Singer Sargent, visit Britannica.com.

Sargent, John Singer (1856-1925). American painter who settled in England and became the outstanding portraitist of his time. Born in Italy, Sargent studied there and in Paris, where he became a good friend of Monet. In 1885, he settled in London where he remained until his death, although he visited the USA frequently and retained his citizenship. He was an official war artist during the First World War and his powerful Gassed hangs in the Imperial War Museum.

(1856-1925), portrait painter. Born in Florence, Italy, Sargent was the son of moderately well-to-do American expatriates. Constantly traveling and with enthusiastic parental encouragement, Sargent and his sisters imbibed the art, music, and culture of Europe.

After brief study at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence, Sargent moved in 1874 to Paris, the international art center. He studied with the fashionable portraitist Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran and, after strenuous examinations, gained entrance to the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Early artistic achievements assured the precocious Sargent of a promising career within the Parisian art scene: the Salon of 1877 accepted his Frances Sherburne Ridley Watts, and the 1878 Salon accepted The Oyster Gatherers of Cancale; in 1879, his portrait of Carolus-Duran received honorable mention. Other critically acclaimed works included El Jaleo and The Daughters of Edward D. Boit. In these years he also sought to establish his reputation in America by sending pictures to the New York exhibitions of the Society of American Artists, a group of younger, Paris-trained painters then challenging the older American academicians.

Portrait commissions began to come his way, but dropped off with the scandal of his 1884 Salon entry, Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau). This portrait of an American society beauty married to a successful French banker attracted criticism because of what seemed to be the subject's eccentric exhibitionism. Sargent retreated to England where portrait commissions still awaited him. Patrons and friends, including the expatriate American novelist Henry James, urged him to stay, and the following year he established permanent residence in London.

A highly complimentary article by James in 1887 for Harper's New Monthly Magazine boosted Sargent's reputation just as he arrived in America for exhibitions of his work in Boston and New York. During his next trip to America (1889-1890), portrait commissions almost overwhelmed him, but he also agreed to paint murals for the new Boston Public Library. Over the next three decades Sargent spent much time in Boston while he finished this commission as well as murals for Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts.

On both sides of the Atlantic the celebrated Sargent was sought after to paint portraits of American businessmen and financiers, English manufacturers and their wives, fashionable Edwardian aristocrats, and the English gentry. The international art community admired his style of seemingly effortless, bravura brushwork and dashing likenesses. But he tired of portrait requests and increasingly turned his attention to painting his sisters Emily Sargent and Violet Ormond and Violet's family, and, more and more, holiday subjects in watercolor and oil.

History will remember Sargent as a portraitist in the grand tradition of Van Dyck, Reynolds, and Gainsborough. He captured the poise and authority of the prominent and influential in an era when the British Empire reached its zenith and America had arrived as a dominant international power.

Bibliography:

Patricia Hills, John Singer Sargent (1986); Stanley Olson, John Singer Sargent: His Portrait (1986).

Author:

Patricia Hills

See also Painting and Sculpture.

1856–1925, American painter, b. Florence, Italy, of American parents, educated in Italy, France, and Germany. In 1874 he went to Paris, where he studied under Carolus-Duran. He remained there for 10 years except for visits to the United States, Spain, and Africa. From his first exhibit in the Salon of 1878 he received early recognition, and by 1884, when he moved to London, he already enjoyed a high reputation as a portrait painter. He spent most of the remainder of his life there, painting the dashing portraits of American and English social celebrities for which he is famous. For a considerable period of time, Sargent was the world's best-known and most highly paid portrait painter. In 1890 he was commissioned by the architect Charles McKim to paint a series of murals, The History of Religion, for the Boston Public Library. He completed them in 1916.

An untiring and prolific painter of great facility, Sargent was particularly brilliant in his treatment of textures. In his portraiture he showed great virtuosity in his handling of the brushstrokes, quickly capturing the likeness and vitality of his subject. His portraits nearly always flattered his sitters; he remarked upon this once, saying his was a pimp's profession. During his youth, and again after 1910, he deserted portrait painting long enough to produce a large number of brilliant impressionistic landscapes in watercolor, many of them painted in Venice and the Tyrol. Of these, fine collections are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Brooklyn Museum. His portraits and figure pieces are housed in many private and public collections in England and the United States. Well-known examples are the portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner and El Jaleo (Gardner Mus., Boston); the portraits of Madame X, the Wyndham sisters, Henry Marquand, and William Merritt Chase (Metropolitan Mus.); The Fountain (Art Inst., Chicago); and Children of E. D. Boit (Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston). During the late 1990s and early 2000s Sargent was subject to wide-ranging critical reappraisal, provoking a renewed appreciation for his work.

Bibliography

See E. Kilmurray and R. Ormond, ed., John Singer Sargent: The Complete Paintings, (3 vol., 1998–2003); biographies by P. Hills (1986), S. Olson (1986), T. J. Fairbrother (1994), and E. Kreiter and M. Zabludoff (2002); studies by T. J. Fairbrother (1986 and 2000), E. Kilmurray, ed. (1998), C. Little and A. Skolnick, ed. (1999), C. Ratcliff (2001), and B. Robertson, ed. (2003).

Quotes:

"Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend."

"I hate to paint portraits! I hope never to paint another portrait in my life. Portraiture may be all right for a man in his youth, but after forty I believe that manual dexterity deserts one, and, besides, the color-sense is less acute. Youth can better stand the exactions of a personal kind that are inseparable from portraiture. I have had enough of it."

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