A Landmark John Singer Sargent Exhibition Opens at The Tate

The conceit of the show, which Tate has produced the exhibition with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, is to show some of the clothing the sitters were wearing. On view is a ruffled, black taffeta opera cloak, the very one worn by Lady Sassoon in 1907, though Sargent cleverly turns back the collar to reveal a flaming pink lining. (The portrait shows an open debt to Manet.) There’s the netted green dress, adorned with jewel beetles, that Ellen Terry wore to play Lady Macbeth. In the 1889 portrait, she holds her crown aloft, on the brink of becoming the English queen. There’s the dazzling yellow dress worn by La Carmencita, which Sargent kept until his death; and Louise Pomeroy’s cinched waisted velvet evening gown. But while the paintings are packed with energy and narrative— like stills from a film set—the clothes sit lifeless in huge glass boxes. They contribute almost nothing to the exhibition.

Sargent himself has a compelling story. Born in Florence in 1856 to ex-patriated Americans, art-educated in Paris, and inspired by Velasquez, and Venetian street scenes, by his mid-20s, he was living off his portrait painting. By 1886, he’d moved to London, much encouraged to do so by his new friend Henry James. He settled in among the artistic community of Chelsea and became the most successful portrait painter of his day. He might have flattered and finessed his sitters, but he also allowed their personalities to prevail. Lord Ribblesdale (1902) is show thin and beaky in his ratcatcher hunting gear; the sensation is sinister, as is the hooked riding crop in his hand. The gynacologist Dr Samuel-Jean Pozzi, shown at home in 1881, is dressed in floor-length crimson dressing gown. The thought of him using those long thin fingers in a professional capacity is enough to make a lady shiver. Sargent, for all the flamboyance and glamour, knows how to unpack his subjects too.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Sargent without a few saccharine children thrown in, and mawkish as they are, it’s hardly his fault that they landed on the lids of a thousand biscuit tins. But among the youth and the velvet, glimpses of his own personality emerge too. He is equally drawn to the more marginal of his acquaintances, and takes delight in portraying the steeliness of the wool-suited Jane Evans, an Eton house mistress. Vernon Lee, the nom de plume of Violet Paget, comes more or less dressed as a man. He endows his wealthy female jewish sitters, who were still only reluctantly accepted in certain parts of London society, with style, energy and presence. Of all his women, they look like they had the most to say.

Still, portrait painting is a tiring business. By the age of 51, Sargent had had enough of cajoling and soothing sitters through nine or ten sessions, and closed his Tite Street studio. Although he painted the occasional grandee (John D Rockefeller in 1917), the best of his grand manner works are right here. Just don’t bother too much with the frocks.

“Sargent and Fashion”, at Tate Britain until 7 July 2024