John Singer Sargent: Associate of the Royal Academy

"Israelites Oppressed" by John Singer Sargent

"In 1894 John Singer Sargent, who that year was represented in the Academy by a portrait of Miss Chanler, and a lunette and portion of the ceiling for the Public Library of Boston, and in the New English Art Club by four sketches, was elected an A.R.A. (Associate of the Royal Academy). His own art was too clearly distance from the Academic painting of the day for him not to experience some nervousness at finding himself in such company. In thanking Ralph Curtis for his congratulations on the honour thus conferred, he wrote:

'My Dear Ralph, Thanks for your flourish of trumpets and waving of caps - If one lives in London, as I seem to be doing vaguely, I suppose it really counts for something to be an A.R.A. It remains to be proved; but I shall watch for the symptoms with interest. I have had no end of letters of congratulation from Academicians which would point to the fact of my having more of an affinity with old fogies than I expected. Today I have called on about 20 of them, such is the tradition and it is a curious revelation to find the man whose name and work one has hated and railed at for years, is a man of the world and altogether delightful...'

The reception given to the first installment of his Boston work shown in public was tentative but favourable. The lunette represented the children of Israel under their oppressors, Pharaoh and the King of Assyria. With the lunette were exhibited the decorations for the vaulting of the ceiling, symbolical representations of Astarte, Moloch and Nut, the Egyptian goddess and Mother of the Universe. In the exhibit the lunette was hung in the cove of the ceiling as as nearly as possible to catch the same light that it would receive in the Boston Library.

But where a work is not only finely painted but is in addition incomprehensible, it is well qualified to attract the multitude, and so the lunette and decorations came to be the wonder of the exhibition."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)