John Singer Sargent
The Paris Years (1874-1884)
John Singer Sargent (Florence, 1856 – London, 1925) is, along with James McNeill Whistler, the most famous American artist of his generation and arguably one of the greatest painters of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Adored in the United States (his portrait of Madame X is considered the Mona Lisa of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American art collection in New York), he is also celebrated in the United Kingdom, where he spent most of his career. In France, however, his name and work remain largely unknown, something the Musée d’Orsay exhibition hopes to change.
While the 2007 exhibition Painters of Light: Sargent & Sorolla (Paris, Musée du Petit Palais) introduced the artist to the French public, no solo exhibition has ever been devoted to him. Yet it was in France, and more specifically in Paris, that the young painter trained, developed his style and network of artists, achieved his first successes, and produced some of his greatest masterpieces, such as Dr. Pozzi at Home (1881, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles) and Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
Developed in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the exhibition “Sargent. The Parisian Years” aims to introduce this painter to a wide audience. The exhibition brings together more than 90 works by John Singer Sargent, some of which have never been presented in France. It traces the meteoric rise of the young artist, who arrived in Paris in 1874 at the age of 18 to study with Carolus-Duran. The exhibition covers his career up to the mid-1880s, when he moved to London following the scandal caused by his portrait of Madame Gautreau (Madame X) at the Salon.
During this decade, Sargent forged both his style and personality in the dizzying Parisian art world, marked by the proliferation of exhibitions, the development of Naturalism and Impressionism, and the rise of Paris as the world capital of art. The young American painter found support among other expatriates but also integrated brilliantly into French society, forging ties with a circle of enlightened artists, writers, and patrons. The numerous portraits Sargent left us of these figures paint a captivating portrait of a rapidly changing, highly cosmopolitan society, where the old European aristocracy rubbed shoulders with the young fortunes of the new world. Constantly seeking new inspiration, Sargent rarely depicted “Parisian life” but took advantage of his roots in the French capital to make numerous trips to Europe and North Africa. He brought back numerous paintings, landscapes, and genre scenes, which combined exoticism, mystery, and sensuality. But it was in the field of portraiture that Sargent established himself as the most talented artist of his time, surpassing his masters and equaling the great artists of the past. His formidable technical skill, the brilliance of his touch, the shimmering of his colors, and the provocative assurance of his compositions disturbed the public and seduced critics who saw in him the worthy heir to Velázquez. Commenting in 1883 on one of his most original paintings, Portrait of the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, the American writer Henry James, a friend of Sargent, noted that the artist “offers the strangely disturbing spectacle of a talent who, at the threshold of his career, has already nothing more to learn.”
In 1884, the portrait of Virginie Gautreau, which Sargent would later describe as “the best thing he ever did,” nevertheless provoked hostile reactions at the Salon. These reactions focused in particular on the sitter’s morality and reflected the worldly and social stakes of “public” portraiture in France at the end of the 19th century. A special section of the exhibition is dedicated to this moment in Sargent’s career and to this painting, exceptionally loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and on view in Paris for the first time since… 1884!
Based on extensive research, “Sargent. The Parisian Years” also takes stock of the lasting ties that the artist maintained with his city of training, even after his move to London. His commitment to the inclusion of Olympia by Manet, an artist he admired, in the national collections in 1890, bears witness to this. It was also in France that Sargent received his first form of institutional recognition, when the State purchased his portrait of the dancer Carmencita for the Musée du Luxembourg in 1892.
