John Singer Sargent: In the Studio of Edwin Austin Abbey

Edwin Austen Abbey's portion of the studio at Morgan Hall

"In November, 1891, John Singer Sargent joined Edwin Austin Abbey and his family at Morgan Hall, Fairford, and there for certain months in each year till 1895 he remained to share the studio and to pursue his Boston Library decorations. Two students were chosen to assist them, James Finn and Wilfrid de Glehn, the latter becoming one of Sargent's staunchest friends.

Work would begin at nine or nine-thirty every morning and continue till dark, the studio being divided into a Sargent territory and an Abbey territory. An Italian named Colarossi came as model for Sargent, and one Demarco, 'who had a very beautiful head,' posed for Abbey.

Later on a younger model became necessary for Sargent's purposes and an Italian named Inverno was chosen. This was the brother of Nicola d'Inverno, who subsequently in 1893 came to the studio as a model and remained in Sargent's service more than twenty years. He used to pose for the frieze of the prophets and other portions of the decorative work, and was constantly in attendance, assisting in the preparation of the 'relief' work for the Boston Library, and looking after the mechanical accessories of the artist's work, accompanying Sargent abroad and taking charge of brushes, canvases and paints. Nicola wrote his recollections of Sargent in the Boston 'Sunday Advertiser,' Feb. 7, 1926 and concluded: 'Every hour I spent in his service will be a precious memory for ever. The world calls him a great, I know him to be a good, man.'"

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Back to London

"Interior of the Hagia Sophia"
by John Singer Sargent

"After Egypt and Greece, John Singer Sargent and his family went to Constantinople. Here, by bribing an official, he obtained leave to do a sketch of the interior of Santa Sophia, one of the most purely atmospheric canvases which he painted. There are probably a few better examples that exist of his power for rendering the structure and spacing of a building with the minimum of definition.

In August his sister Violet was married in Paris to Monsieur Ormond. It was not till the autumn of 1891 that Sargent was back in England after an absence, save for a brief visit in June, of two years. It was then that Mrs. Sargent and Miss Emily leased a house close to Sargent's own in Tite Sreet. In the years to follow a large part of his home life was spent with his sister Emily.

Sargent was beginning to be recognized as the first of living portrait painters. In London he had formed many friendships, and was greatly sought after. Being 'licked into London shape' had proved a less trying process than he had anticipated. He, Whistler and Henry James were recognized in the nineties as stars of the first magnitude, and though Sargent and James equally and consistently shunned publicity like the plague, 'renown' has a tendency to make things easy, to simplify the stranger's problems, and amplify his area of selection and choice. At the same time any one more completely unconscious of his prestige than Sargent can hardly be imagined. It coursed and eddied about his feet, but he never suffered it to throw him off his balance or to disturb the full and even measure of his working days."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Egypt and Greece

“Egyptians Raising Water from the Nile”
by John Singer Sargent

"In the autumn of 1890 John Singer Sargent and his sister, after a year's absence, returned to Europe, going direct to Marseilles, where they joined Mrs. Sargent and Miss Emily; the whole party proceeding together to Egypt and arriving at Alexandria on Christmas Eve. Thence they went to Cairo, where Sargent hired a studio and painted. After a month at Cairo, Sargent and his family embarked on a steamer and went up the Nile to Luxor and Philae. Sargent himself with an interpreter made an expedition to Fayoum.

His main purpose in Egypt was to familiarize himself with the legend and myth, the history and archaeology, the symbols and religion of the country, and thus furnish himself with the material for the first stage of his Boston decoration. He came away at the end of this visit equipped with all the knowledge his exacting mind could require. The character and significance of the Egyptian gods, their relation to their time, their influence in history, the legends to which they had given origin, and the symbolism by which they were surrounded, had now only to be sifted and sorted in his brain, that they might be adapted for pictorial embodiment. 

Just as Gustave Flaubert had visited Carthage and settled down to master the archaeology necessary for 'Salammbo,' so had Sargent pored over the monuments and lore of Egypt that he might correctly interpret the spirit and significance of the pagan deities. His accuracy has never been questioned.

In April the family crossed over to Athens, whence Sargent set out with an interpreter for Olympia and Delphi. Every morning he was in the saddle at 4 a.m., only ending the day's journey when night again fell. He rode through miles of country carpeted with wild flowers. Long before his return to Athens he had filled up every available corner of canvas and paper that he had taken for oil and watercolour."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Murals and La Carmencita

"La Carmencita" by J.S. Sargent

"When Edwin Austin Abbey returned to England he sought for a place where he could work undisturbed. Wanderings through the West Country finally brought him to Fairford, where in Morgan Hall he saw the very house he wanted. This was in the autumn of 1890. He entered into a lease for twenty-one years and at once began the construction in the grounds of a studio 64 feet long by 40 feet by 25 feet. There in November, 1891, Sargent joined him, and in cordial association carried out much of the preliminary work for the Boston Library designs.

Sargent meanwhile had remained in New York through the summer of 1890, pushing on with studies for his decorative scheme, and filling up the intervals with painting a number of portraits and a study of Carmencita, a Spanish dancer recently arrived from Europe. The public of New York enthralled by her beauty and sensational dancing. 

She was reminiscent of the sources from which his picture of 'El Jaleo' had been drawn. In mood she was wayward, now sullen and subdued, then breaking into tempests of anger and impatience, ready to smash anything that was to hand or, again, sinking into an entirely childish readiness to be diverted or amused. She found posing intolerable. Movement was the essence of her existence. Sargent had to exercise his ingenuity. He used to paint his nose red to rivet her childish interest upon himself, and when the red nose failed he would fascinate her by eating his cigar. This performance was the dancer's delight.

Sargent was anxious that Mrs. Gardner should see this 'bewilderingly superb creature,' and in the end a party was given by her at the Tenth Street studio of William Chase. Sargent was seated on the floor. The studio was dimly lit. At the end of the room was just such a scene as he had represented in 'El Jaleo.' Carmencita, a light thrown on her from below, now writhing like a serpent, now with an arrogant elegance strutted the stage with a shadowy row of guitarists in the background strumming their heady Spanish music. Before she had danced many steps she threw a rose at her painter as he sat in the half-light on the floor. He picked it up, and put it in his buttonhole.

The picture painted by Sargent was  exhibited at the Society of American Artists at New York in 1890, at the Royal Academy in 1891, and at the Exhibition of American Art in 1919, and it now hangs in the Luxembourg. When the picture was exhibited in New York an admirer offered 600 pounds. Sargent said, 'I was unable to accept it as it had cost me more than that to paint.' 'Cost you more! how do you mean?' 'Why, in bracelets and things.' To such an extent had this capricious beauty to be coaxed before she would fulfill her promise to pose."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: The Boston Public Library Murals, Pt. 1

"Study for Frieze of the Prophets, Boston Public Library"
by John Singer Sargent

As John Singer Sargent prolifically painted portraits, figurative work and watercolors, he was also engaged with a stupendous decoration. Within a very few years of his arrival in England, when he was only thirty-four, he undertook his murals for the Boston Public Library and was occupied with it for the best part of thirty years. It was a task which taxed his imaginative and intellectual resources and evoked in him also a talent for the plastic arts and modelling in relief.

The Boston Public Library was designed by the famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White and was in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The trustees had resolved that it should be decorated internally in a manner worthy of the architecture. It was agreed to invite the cooperation of Sargent, Edwin Abbey, Puvis de Chavannes and Augustus St. Gaudens. Sargent was given the commission to decorate the special libraries floor at the head of the principal staircase: 84 feet long, 23 feet wide, and 26 feet high, lit from above with a vaulted ceiling.

Though Sargent's agreement with the trustees was come to in May, 1890, the contract was not signed till January 18, 1893, when they undertook to pay fifteen thousand dollars, and the painter to complete the work by December 30, 1897. In 1895 the scope of the scheme was very much extended. For another fifteen thousand dollars, Sargent agreed to decorate the side wall as well and another contract was signed.

His chosen subject for this work was "The development of religious thought from paganism through Judaism to Christianity.' For once he would not be dealing with the visible and tangible world, but rather a thing so abstract as a movement of thought. It was a daring scheme. He must have seen in a flash of intellectual vision the possibilities of the idea, and he started on the sketches immediately.

At the end of May, his friend Edwin Abbey wrote on the way to England: 

'I went into [John's] studio a day or two before I sailed and saw stacks of sketches of nude people, saints, I dare say, most of them, although from my cursory observations of them they seemed a bit earthy. You will surely get a great thing from him. He can do anything, and doesn't know himself what he can do. He is latent with all manner of possibilities and the Boston people need not be afraid that he will be eccentric or impressionistic, or anything that is not perfectly serious and non-experimental when it comes to work of this kind.'

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

"Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth"
by John Singer Sargent

"In 1889 John Singer Sargent exhibited at the Academy portraits of 'Sir George Henschel,' 'Mrs. George Gribble,' and 'Henry Irving'; at the New English Art Club, 'A Morning Walk,' and 'St. Martin's Summer,' and at the New Gallery the well-known picture of 'Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth.'

Ellen Terry's dress for Lady Macbeth was designed by Mrs. Comyns-Carr, who relates on the first night of the play Sargent shared her box and, on the appearance of Ellen Terry on the stage, exclaimed with that lingering intonation so familiar to to those who knew him, 'I say!' It was a sign in him, unpretentious in itself as a schoolboy's expression of delight, that he had been 'bowled over.'

Comyns-Carr described Terry's dress' genesis thusly: 'It was cut from fine Bohemian yarn of soft green silk and blue tinsel after costume designs by Viollet le Duc. Henry Irving did not think it brilliant enough, so it was sewn all over with red green beetle wings and a narrow border of Celtic design worked out in rubies and diamonds. To this was added a cloak of shot velvet in heather tones upon which griffins were embroidered in flame-coloured tinsel. The wimple and veil were held in place by a cordet of rubies and two long plaits twisted with gold hung to her knees.' This costume survives in the Ellen Terry Memorial Museum in Kent.

An art critic from 'The Times' reported that Sargent chose her pose to express 'the moment when Lady Macbeth, the deed accomplished, is putting on the crown . . . The face is pallid as death, and on it the artist has striven to express the meeting point and the clash of two supreme emotions - of ambition, and of the sense of crime accomplished and the moral law thrown down.'

It was Oscar Wilde who spoke of her appearance to pose for Sargent in Tite Street: 'The street that on a wet and dreary morning has vouchsafed the vision of Lady Macbeth in full regalia magnificently seated in a four-wheeler can never again be as other streets.' In her diary Ellen Terry gave her opinion of her portrait: 'The picture of me is nearly finished, and I think it magnificent. The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful . . . Sargent's picture is talked of everywhere and quarrelled about as much as my way of playing the part. The picture is the sensation of the year. Of course opinions differ about it, but there are dense crowds round it day after day.'

The picture was purchased by Henry Irving, who was himself sitting to Sargent at this time, and hung for many years in the alcove of the Beefsteak Room, where the actor liked to entertain."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: His Father's Death

"Self-Portrait," 1907 by J.S. Sargent

"In the early part of 1888 John Singer Sargent was back in England. His family had spent the winter in Florence, where his father had been struck down by a paralytic stroke. In the spring it was decided to bring him to England, and a house was leased for the summer at Calcot, Reading. Such time as he could spare from his work in London Sargent now spent with his family at Calcot. In the winter they moved to Bournemouth, to a house near Skerryvore, the former home of Robert Louis Stevenson. It was here in April, 1889, that FitzWilliam died.

Since his seizure at Florence Sargent's father had been an invalid, his contacts with the world broken, his memory affected, and his capacity for movement gravely impaired. Sargent watched over him with a 'lovely happiness of temper' and constant solicitude. The last months of the father's life were eased by the ministering care of the son. 

Yet Sargent did not, as a rule, suffer invalids gladly. By nature robust, he was so seldom ill himself that he was inclined to think others were apt to surrender too easily. When, in later years, he was subject himself to inroads of influenza he was singularly obstinate in working up to the last possible moment, then only to pursue unaided methods of salvation in the austere surroundings of his Tite Street bedroom. 

But those whose memories of him go back to 1889 recall vividly the rare quality of the tenderness with which he soothed the last months of his father's life. Before his father's death he had taken the vicarage at Fladbury, and there the succeeding summer was spent by the family."

To be continued

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