Paris,
Although he was part of an American family, chance wanted John Singer Sargent to be born in Florence in 1856. Nineteenth-century Europe would give him character: it seems that he was refined and sensitive from childhood, and he did not know the country of his parents until he was twenty years old: his childhood was spent wandering through France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria or Germany; His father, who was a doctor, abandoned the profession and his family survived on a modest income that did not prevent the future artist from speaking, quickly and fluently, French and Italian, fluent in German and attending, together with his sisters, piano and dance classes. According to testimonies, his father wanted him to join the American navy, but his mother, surely observant, guessed that her only son would become a painter.
As a teenager, Sargent entered the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts, just a few years before moving to Paris, perhaps the most important city in his career and which now pays tribute to him. There he trained in the workshop of Carolus-Duran, whom he would skillfully portray: his teacher admired Velázquez and trained his students not to use drawings or sketches when preparing their compositions, but he did insist that they draw the main planes of the faces on the blank canvases, with a wide brush. Furthermore, according to other pupils, he emphasized the importance of capturing the flows of light on surfaces, looking for intonations and paying attention to what shone and flowed, rather than to masses or volumes and highly delineated tonal structures.
In that vital Parisian period Sargent was very productive (in fact, he always would be); In 1877, one of his sisters wrote to a friend who was literally working like a donkey, from morning to nightwhich did not prevent him from taking care of his elegant clothing and polite treatment, which would also help him make his way into the high society of the French capital.
It would not take long for him to begin exhibiting at the Salon (1878), where he showed portraits of individuals who may seem both close and distant to us: their faces conveyed a sense of life compatible with a refined detachment with which perhaps he himself identified. Furthermore, his use of clothing was evidently theatrical, as were the poses; The result was thus situated between clarity and enigma: the models seem to be exposed to the viewer, but also maintain a particular (and hidden) inner life and an inevitably attractive sense of remoteness. For all these reasons, Sargent was already a fashionable portrait painter in the mecca of art when he was around twenty-five.
Among his potential models, the notion spread that posing for him was not easy: he did not flatter them, no matter how famous or prestigious, and there was a widespread conviction that accepting this author’s portrait of you was equivalent to “showing your face.” This was confirmed by Madame Pierre Gautreau (the well-known Madame X), whose portrait was exhibited in 1884 at the Salon, arousing indignation for the supposed audacity of her low-cut dress and the haughtiness of her face. One critic even declared of this composition: The profile is pointed, the eye microscopic, the mouth imperceptible, the color pale, the neck fibrous, the right arm is disarticulated, the hand flaccid as if without bones.
It is known that, in the original painting, one of the straps was hanging, but after the scandal of these reactions – which greatly upset the model and her family – that strap was repainted and returned to its place. In the same year in which he worked on this work (1883-1884), Sargent met a writer in the French capital with whom he had a lot in common: Henry James, who would be one of his great defenders. He encouraged him to move to England, where he would pave the way for him, opening a new phase in his career since 1886.
In any case, while he remained in Paris we know that Sargent became very interested in contemporary French painting: he acquired two works by Manet and four by Monet, and he also became friends with the latter, going so far as to photograph him when he worked outdoors; However, for most Impressionists he was a stranger. His way of working with light and shadow was pre-impressionist, even though he took traits from the authors of that movement whom he admired. Degas, for example, did not go beyond considering him a skilled portrait painter like so many then in fashion.
Nothing about him, in any case, was simple or classic: he may have been one of the last great society portraitists, and he clearly drew from Ingres and Velázquez, but he also contributed to his creations a great richness of textures, a sharp and personal compositional sense and a high theatricality. If French artists sought to purify shapes and tones and give their images greater complexity, Sargent opted for sumptuous portraits, to contribute to the tradition of that genre, instead of questioning it; The challenge was to prevent their work from responding to a formula, from becoming a demonstration of skill.
Although his women are beautifully dressed and contain a lot of life, it is a staged life, created by the painter for them, as well as their suggested sexuality; His men, in the same way, seem to have been born, with some exceptions, with their suits on and with distant expressions on their faces.
In collaboration with the Metropolitan of New York, the Musée d’Orsay hosts the exhibition “John Singer Sargent. Éblouir Paris”, which brings together ninety works linked to this stage and representative of the meteoric rise that the city gave to this author. In many cases, they return to where they were first held. This exhibition coincides with the centenary of the artist’s death, and comes to commemorate him, but above all it is intended to (re)present him in France, where he has been relatively forgotten by the general public, unlike the panorama in the United States and England, which offer him recurring exhibitions.
Review how, in his ten exceptional years in Paris – from the mid-1870s to the 1880s – Sargent forged his creative personality during the Third Republic, a context marked artistically by the proliferation of exhibitions, the development of naturalism and impressionism, and the rise of Paris as the world capital of painting.
He found support among artists, writers and demanding collectors (with women playing an important role in that rise) and he himself knew how to reflect the most captivating side of that cosmopolitan society in which the old aristocracy mixed with the young fortunes of the New World.
Unlike his contemporaries, he was not interested in urban views, but from his trips to other European countries and North Africa he did bring landscapes and genre scenes that combined fashionable exoticism with the mystery and sensuality that were his hallmark. His field, however, never ceased to be that of portraiture, and in this genre he was perhaps the greatest talent of his time. After looking at Edward Darley Boit’s daughters, the aforementioned Henry James exclaimed that, at the beginning of his career, Sargent no longer had anything to learn.
A subsection of the exhibition is dedicated to Madame Xwhich the painter considered the best work of his life and whose reception highlighted the complex social, aesthetic and worldly issues hidden behind the art of “public” portraiture in France at the end of the 19th century. Sargent touched up the strap, but on other issues he did not give in: he defended the inclusion of the Olympia of Manet in the national collections in 1890.
He himself received French institutional recognition a couple of years later: when the State acquired his large portrait of the dancer Carmencita for the Luxembourg Museum, an honor that was rarely granted to foreign artists (and portraitists).
“John Singer Sargent. Éblouir Paris”
MUSÉE D´ORSAY
1 Rue de la Légion d’Honneur
Paris
From September 23, 2025 to January 11, 2026
