John Singer Sargent: The Shift to London

"The Misses Vickers" by John Singer Sargent

"While the scandal of 1884 certainly contributed to John Singer Sargent's eventual decision to establish himself in England, his move was not a simple or immediate response to the drama which surrounded 'Madame X.' As early as 1882, a review in the 'Art Journal' had indicated that Sargent might choose to settle in England, and he had tested the waters there by exhibiting a range of pictures there at the Royal Academy, the Grosvenor Gallery and the Fine Art Society.

There were and would continue to be cross-currents in his artistic life between France, England and America, and it may be that for someone of his cosmopolitan background, London came to see the most natural and appropriate junction, as it had for Henry James."

In the summer of 1884, after leaving Paris, he painted the picture of the Misses Vickers which was exhibited at the Salon in 1885 and sent to the Royal Academy in 1886. The Vickers, who had been quick to appreciate the talent of the painter, became the first English patrons of his art in England.

Early in 1885 he moved to London and engaged a studio at 13 Tite Street (subsequently renumbered as 33 Tite Street) of which he took a twenty-one years' lease in 1900. It was the first step in his career as a painter in London. It had previously belonged to Whistler, who had decorated it with a scheme of yellow, so vehement that it gave a visitor the sensation of standing inside an egg.

Beyond Henry James and the American artists then painting in England Sargent knew few people. He was taking a venturesome step. In Paris he had left behind him that cosmopolitan world from which his sitters had been principally drawn. He was little known in England either personally or by reputation, and what was known about him placed him rather in the position of an accused suspect. Did he not come equipped with the French artistic outfit, and was not all French art suspect?

But he was twenty-eight years of age, his frame more solid than of yore, and of athletic build, his face now fuller but handsome and distinguished in feature and expression. A musician, a linguist, widely read in the literature of both England and France, and as deeply proficient in the history and theory of art as he was in its practice, he was well equipped for winning his way. His object was to record with the utmost skill attainable the thing as he saw it, without troubling about its ethical significance or, indeed, any significance other than its visual value. He was there to paint in his own way with only one task before him, to put at the service of art his own vigorous and accomplished technique.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and "John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits" by Richard Ormond and Elain Kilmurray.)