Singer Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends

National Portrait Gallery, London. 12^th February – 25^th May 2015

                       

                   Dr Pozzi at Home
                      Oil on canvas, 1881

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth
Oil on canvas, 1889

An artist misunderstood until now?  Known for being a formal society painter, a careerist happy to pander to aristocratic privilege working to commissions. This exhibition reveals a more intimate and psychologically penetrating insight into his friends; writers, actors and fellow artists. He is responding, not to patrons who pay him to look glamorous but to people he liked or admired or was just purely interested him. Free to probe their characters he provides an insight into the ‘in crowd’ of the late nineteenth century.

He reveals an exploration of individuality and challenges the status quo, his portrait of Madame x, caused a scandal when it was shown at the Paris salon (1884), this was because of its blatant sensuality. A picture of a beautiful socialite who was far from faithful to her husband. Society was shocked by her appearance, her shoulder strap allowed to fall suggestively loose, Sargent needed to retreat to London to avoid the uproar he caused in Paris.

Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife
Oil on canvas,1885

His friend and novelist, Robert Louise Stevenson is captured in a striking almost ‘snapshot in time’ picture. Does this painting capture the true self as he is caught striding across the middle of his living room, a lanky & thin man walking about and talking, whilst his wife sits passively under a gold threaded silk shawl in the corner of the painting, between the two people in this picture a door opens on to a sinister dark hallway, is this gloomy space revealing the dark side of Stevenson’s imagination?  Twelve months after this sitting Stevenson published The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. (Good and evil exist in the same self)

Henry James, writer and critic in the late nineteenth century was a close friend, Sargent telling his stories through his paintings, James through verse. Both were Americans, raised in Europe by affluent parents, well travelled they brought a realism to their work but they also experimented, exploring psychology and delivered a new sense of identity to their subjects through their respective works.

The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy
Oil on canvas, 1907

The thorn in the side for this exhibition for me was the ‘lack of space’ and interrupted flow through the gallery for us as viewers. The layout I believe failed the mastery of the paintings. Crowded bottlenecks at the entrance/exit (yes the same 2 meter corridor) to the exhibition and confused flow which caused frequent human ‘pile ups’. Distracting and I believe disrespectful to the art itself.

A refreshing and exciting exhibition where storytelling, personal intimacy & informality have been revealed, which at a typically staid and formal period for late 19^th Century portraiture created quite a stir. Definitely worth a visit but go early to minimise human pile ups!

Visited National Portrait Gallery, London. March 2015