Good evening, everyone. I'm Betsy Broun,
I'm the Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and am overjoyed to see
so many people here. This is the first of our three Clarice Smith distinguished
lectures in American art for the 2010 season. It's always especially fun to do
this when we have Clarice Smith herself here to thank in person. Thank you so
much Clarice for bringing us these wonderful people. Before I introduce
tonight's speaker, I want to just do a few housekeeping things. I know we
previously announced in our quarterly calendar, which I hope all of you are
getting, that next in the series would be our distinguished artist
lecture by Julie Mera to on October, 6th. Unfortunately Julie has had to
reschedule. She's coming in 2011, instead. But we're very excited that we
have booked Sarah Sze, the exciting installation artist. She will be speaking
not that night but on November 16th. You'll get a notice in the mail, but we
printed up a little quickie here for you to take home so that you'll have the date
to put on your fridge. She's very exciting as well. We're
excited to have her. The next one chronologically will be Boston Critic
Mark Feeney, he will be speaking right here on October 27th. We hope you'll join us
then. I also kind of want to call out Nona Martin who organises these for us. I
don't usually talk about her, but she just does a terrific job. I'm very
grateful to her and just wanted to say thank you to Nona, as well. This would be
a great time to turn off whatever you have that is electronic. I'd ask that
you turn it all the way off, not just put it on mute or vibrate because if it's
still turned on with the power than incoming calls create buzzes and
interfere with our audio system. All the way off would be great. Tonight after
the talk we hope to have time to take a few questions. Because these are recorded
and webcast, it would be great if you would line up behind the microphones on either side so when you ask a question
everybody on the web casting can hear it as well. Then we will turn off the
questions at a certain point so I hope you'll join us upstairs in the courtyard
and we'll have a brief reception after. You can talk with our speaker there. We're very happy that tonight's speaker
is Dr. Erica Hirschler. She is the John Moores Cabot curator of American
painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Dr. Herschel graduated with
honors from Wellesley and she has an MA and a PhD from Boston College. She's
quite a long record of terrific exhibitions and catalogs and books,
writing about some of the best-loved and most wonderful American artist of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She was a major contributor to the
blockbuster show at the Metropolitan last year called, "Americans in Paris." She
also has done a groundbreaking study of women artists in the Boston area.
She has published also on artists like Child Hassim, Dennis Miller Bunker,
Mary Casset, Charles Sheeler and of course the much-beloved John Singer Sargent - who
is a special interest of hers, and the subject of tonight's talk. In fact, she
wrote about the many, many portraits that Sargent has done of children,
which was quite an interesting project. She also was a contributor to the
catalog for "Sargent and the Sea" which most of you must have seen at the
Corcoran last year. Most recently, she was cited in the Wall
Street Journal as every publishers dream scholar. The article was about the
decline in art book publishing in the era of online. Her book "Sargent's
Daughters: The Biography of a Painting" was cited as the exception to the rule. It's sold out its first printing of 5,000
copies in just a few weeks. It's already in its third edition and it was only
published last year. She has made the MFA publishing house very happy. The book is a 360 degree look
at one of Sargent's largest and best paintings, The Daughters of Edward Darley
Boit. It's an extraordinary picture, I think we're going to hear about it
tonight. One reviewer wrote about this book that
it is, "an aesthetic, philosophical, and personal tour de force that will change
the way you look at Sargent's work." It's not as if she has nothing to do but
hang around the office and the library write books. She is intimately involved
with the seasons most exciting museum project, the really greatest, most
thrilling thing going on in the field of American art and museums since, well
since the opening of this building in 2006. The new Museum of Fine Arts in
Boston is opening an enormous new wing for the art of the Americas. It will
debut in November right around the corner. It was designed by a name that's
familiar here, Norman Foster of London, and it will be an incredible showcase for a
an amazing collection. It will be the destination visit this year and we know it
will create a lot of new insights into the whole field of American art.
Congratulations in advance on all of your work on that and your publishing
record, as well. With no further ado Erica, welcome to the museum. Thank you so much for that generous
introduction. It's a great pleasure for me to be here and I'm grateful to all of
you for coming with me as we take a look at John Singer Sargent. What I'd like to
do tonight is to talk about some of Sargent's best-known works, including the
daughters of Edward Darley Boit which you'll hear about in depth, but also
several of his other paintings. By doing that I'd like to introduce you to
some new ideas I've been thinking about, about Sargent's work. In 1887 Sargent's
friend, the novelist Henry James, wrote in a Harper's article that you see here introducing the young painter to an
American public. James said "is Mr. Sargent in fact an American painter? The
proper answer to such a question is doubtless that we shall be well advised
to claim him." James explain that Sargent had been born in Europe, had spent his
life in Europe, and that in his art James said, "he might easily be mistaken for a
Frenchman." It's these issues of nationality and cosmopolitanism that I'd
like to explore with you tonight. James' article also introduced a certain
painting to an American public, which you see reproduced in the Harper's article
on the right. It's the painting of the four Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,
which was reproduced here in print for the first time and captioned with the title, "The Hall of the Four Children." Let's begin with, The
Hall of the Four Children. In 1882 Sargent painted four plainly dressed
American girls in the foyer of their rented apartment on the Avenue de Friedland, in Paris. Out of these relatively
unpromising ingredients, he created a haunting masterpiece. A painting that
has proven to be one of the stars of the Boston collection, and which was the
subject entirely of my recent book, Sargent's daughters. It's an odd painting
suspended between light and dark, halfway between portrait and a genre scene, a story
that begs to be told but which seems to have no specific narrative. It's very
unusual for a portrait, you can't even see all of the girls for one thing, and
most commissioned portraits do at least make an attempt to properly record the
faces of each of the sitters. Well, is it a commission portrait? We have no record
whatsoever. Or is it instead more of a collaboration? We know that Sargent was
looking to create a dramatic painting to show in Paris to follow up on his
previous successes, and we also know that at this point in his young career - and he
was only 26 years old when he painted this - he sometimes sought out people that he
was interested in painting. Sargent was young but already regarded as something of a prodigy by his colleagues. He had already achieved a claim at that great
exhibition, the Paris Salon, and he moved easily in a cosmopolitan and
international circle of artists, writers, and musicians. It's possible that
Sargent approached his friends, the Boits, with an idea in mind, or it's possible
that when the Boits approached Sargent with the idea of making a portrait of
their daughters that he suggested making it into something more ambitious. Well
all portraits are really collusion between the artist and the sitter, and in
the case of portraits of children there are also other parties involved. The
parents, and you see the parents here in the upper left Edward Darley Boit and a painting of the
eighteen seventies by his French teacher, Francesca Francis, and at lower right
Sargent's own portrait of Mrs. Boit. Well, who were the Biot's and why did
they allow Sargent to depict their daughters in such an unusual way? Well Louisa Cushing Boit, who you see at
lower right came from a wealthy New England merchant family with a fortune
founded in the China trade. It was her wealth that allowed the family the
freedom to enjoy its peripatetic lifestyle. Isa Boit was a vivacious and
lively woman with a gift for friendship. One family member called her, "a great
noble-hearted woman whose foibles eccentricities added to her charms." Henry
James described her as, "brilliantly friendly and eternally
juvenile." In 1864 she married Edward Boit, also a Bostonian who was educated at
Harvard, who was graduated in 1863. He continued at Harvard in the study
of law and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1866. After the
Civil War was over in 1866/67 Ned and Isa Boit traveled to Europe for a proper and
lengthy tour. Boit was impressed not only by Paris, but by the world of art in
general. He resolved to become an artist. In 1871, they returned to Europe and
Boit studied art in Rome. The couple continued to travel extensively, most
often spending their summers in Normandy or Brittany and by the late eighteen
seventies they were living in Paris. The American colony in Paris was large and
it consisted not only of artists, but also writers, doctors, merchants, and many
others, some of them very wealthy. The elegant neighborhoods of the eighth
arrondissements became the location of a number of artistic and literary
gatherings. It's likely through such circles that
Sargent, who you see here in the photograph at the center, and had met the
Boits, possibly through their mutual friends, Henry James, who you see here, or at a
ruble, an American society hostess who often brought different constituencies
together. Paris was by then the center of the art world. It had taken
over from Rome and thousands of artists from all countries flock there to take
advantages of the opportunities that the city had to offer, its art schools, its
exhibition opportunities, and original works of art from which to study. I'm
showing you here beautiful view of Paris painted by Edward Darling Boit. It's the Place de l'Opéra 1883, a watercolor in the Boston collection. In 1887 just to
demonstrate how tied up Paris was with American art, Henry James
wrote, "it sounds like a paradox but it is a very simple truth that when today we
look for American art we find it mainly in Paris, and when we find it out of
Paris, we find a great deal of Paris in it." You can see why both Sargent and
Boit wanted to be there. The Boit family lived at 32 Avenue de Friedland, one of the
twelve Boulevards that radiate out from the et trios in the atheron desmond, that
favored neighborhood for wealthy American ex-patriots, who loved Paris but
really favored the conveniences of a modern apartment building. I'm showing
you the Avenue de Friedland here from a view from the top of the Arc de Triomphe
and at the bottom Boit's own watercolor of the Arc de
Triomphe, his own neighborhood. Well the Boits lived in a brand new and
expensive building on one of the principal floors in an apartment house
similar to this one. In fact I thought this was their apartment house after all this is 32 avenue to frieldland, but then the benefits of doing research in Paris made themselves aparent and I discovered that the Avenue de Friedland had been completely
renumber. This is the French tax record for the building in the archiver in
Paris and you can see that 32 became 34 became 36. So in fact the Boit's building
has now been raised but the painting absolutely represents the entrance hall
of the family apartment. A transitional space between public and private that
somehow seems especially appropriate for this painting. With a little
architectural training we can sort out this mysterious space by looking at the
angles of reflection in the direction of the light. This floor plan that I'm
showing you is made for me by an architect on the basis of the painting.
You can see the foyer with another route, here's the foyer, here, with another room
behind it that has a fireplace with a mirror hanging over it that reflects the
light from a window in the background. I was delighted to discover that the
layout in the drawing exactly matched the layout of an apartment in Paris
in a building adjacent to the one the Boits lived in. A building that was built
at the same time and was very similar in construction and layout, and
you can see that here. If you give me enough glasses of wine I'll tell you how
I got into this apartment. With the magic of digital imagery, we can
see what a space like this might have been like with the vases. It's very
evident that Sargent represented the actual space and that he represented
some of the actual objects as well. These vases, and these are the actual ones that
were given to the Boston Museum by the Boit family in 1997, are about 6 feet tall
and about this big around. They reflect a contemporary fad for blue and
white china and for things Japanese. Which is evident in this beautiful
painting by Whistler at the upper left from the eighteen sixties which has many
of the same ingredients as the Boit's portrait, a girl, a screen, a fireplace, a
mirror, and a vase. But the vases that you see at lower right were not the fine
antique porcelain admired by connoisseur's like Whistler, instead they
were made in the late 19th century under the sponsorship of Japan's Meiji
government specifically for the Western market. From the inscriptions on the
bottom we know that the Boit's vases were made by the Hirabayashi workshop in
Areata, Japan. Popular objects like these were for sale in both Europe and
the United States particularly in the displays at World's Fairs. The
printed image in the center is a view from a Japanese print of the Japanese
pavilion at the World's Fair in Vienna in 1873. I think you can see
that there's some big vases in there, much like the Boit's vases. Frank
Brinkley, who was one of the early Western scholars of Japanese art,
recognized the difference between art and fashion, observing of vases like these and, "many an American or European amateur flatters himself that in the the big obtrusive vases which disfigure
his vestibule he has genuine specimens of Japanese art when he has in truth
nothing more than the Japanese estimate of his own bad taste." But let's not
dismiss these vases out of hand because they are in fact the only surviving
participants of Sargent's great painting and they have a lot to tell us. They tell
us a lot about Sargent as a painter and I'm comparing for you here the real vase
and Sargent's image of it. I'd ask you to look at how much Sargent left
out. To show all of the decorations of these elaborate vases would have
interfered with the art part of the picture, it would have drawn your eye too
much to the vases and away from the girls. It's that art part that I'd
like to talk about now. The setting of this picture is the
family apartment, and likely though that the painting was made entirely in
Sargent's studio which was across town at the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, a bohemian
street that was crowded with artists and still is. It would have been common
practice to paint such a big canvas, the canvas is about seven feet square, in
the studio, based on sketches that had been made in the family's apartment and
perhaps also on individual sketches of the girls themselves. But no sketches of
any kind survive for this picture. How did Sargent do this very
difficult composition of 4 girls and five vases, if you include the ones that
appear on the mantelpiece? As Sargent so often did, he looked both to
the old masters and to modern art combining elements from both. Sargent's inspiration at this time was frequently Velázquez, and his interest in
Velázquez was very much a part of contemporary French taste. On the left you see Sargent's portrait
of his teacher, Carolus Duron, which he exhibited at the salon 1879. Carolus
Duron advised his students to ceaselessly study Velázquez. You can see from the
two self portraits by Velázquez from the 1640's and 50's that I'm showing
you on the right side of the screen, that Carolus, himself, even imitated Velázquez's
own appearance. The one on the right, bottom
right, I want to point out to you. It's the self-portrait from Las Meninas. We see that homage to Velázquez in Sargent's portrait of
Carolus. After Sargent showed his portrait
of Carolus at the salon, later that same year he traveled to Madrid and he
copied several works after Velázquez in the Prado, including the two that you see
at the right. Velázquez's great Las Meninas from 1656 at
the top right, and his Las Hilanderas, the spinners, from about the same time.
Both of these in the Prado at lower right. Here I'm showing you Las
Meninas on the left and Sargent's copy of it made in 1879 on the right. You can see the similarities to the
Boit's portrait, strange diagonals the seemingly arbitrary arrangement of
figures and objects, the subdued palette, the reflected light in the background,
and the mysterious non-narrative composition. Indeed when Sargent's
portrait of the Boit daughters was displayed in 1883, one critic said
sergeant was "Velasquez come to life again." We had an amazing experience this
year - the only time I think I've ever been glad to lend the Sargent portrait -
when we lent it to the Prado this past spring. I'm showing you on the right
a picture of the Boit daughters together with Las Meninas at the Prado this past year. All I can
say is I think Sargent would have been very pleased indeed. But it wasn't just
to the old masters that Sargent looked, there are also many many links to modern
French painting in Sargent's work. Particularly to Degas who shares with
Sargent an arbitrary arrangement of figures in a box like space, almost like
mannequins in a model theater. Here I'm showing you on the top right, Degas'
wonderful portrait of the Bellelli family from the late eighteen fifties, and at
lower right to Degas' ballet rehearsal from 1874. These are
modern gas-lit interiors, all three of them. All of them demonstrate a lack of a
relationship between the figures. It seems to me that these links between
Sargent and Degas are intriguing and not particularly well understood. That's
one of the things I'd love to look into next, spurred on by the fact that Sargent's
name and address appear in Degas' notebooks. We also see a shared sort of
centrifugal composition. I'm showing you here on the right, Degas' Place de la Concorde
from 1871, a painting now in the Hermitage, which also has this great
empty space right in the center of the composition where you would expect the
main action to unfold. In addition to Velázquez and Degas,
the Boit portrait of course also relates to Sargent's own work, specifically to
the Venetian compositions to which he had devoted himself at the same time.
I'm showing you just one of them, the Venetian interior from the Carnegie
Institute on the right. We know that Sargent had traveled to Venice in 1880
and 1882, hoping to devise a picture for the salon that represented a Venetian
subject, but he never showed such a picture. Some scholars have suggested
that the Boit portrait was Sargent's Venetian salon
picture. That he explored the same artistic aspects that he studied in his
Venetian interiors, but apply them instead to an upscale Parisian subject.
They both shared again the subdued palette, the box-like spaces, the light
coming in from the back, and the non-narrative composition. Sargent's
portrait of the Boit girls also relates to Sargent's other portraits of children.
I'm showing you one of them here, the MFA's Robert de Civrieux from 1879. This
little boy with his dog also seems self-assured planted in an indeterminate
space that has similar props like the oriental carpet on which both the Boits
and Robert stand. But it's this portrait made two years later that I think
there's more comparison to the Boits. This is Sargent's portrait of the
Pailleron children from 1881, now in the Des Moines Arts Center. Sargent did the
whole family of this French playwright, these are the children of the Corcoran's
wonderful full-length portrait of madame Pailleron if you remember that elegant
portrait of a lady in black. To do the children, Marie-Louise, the little girl who you see
here dressed in white, claimed that it took eighty three sittings. An experience
she later recalled as a constant battle between her and Sargent. Of course, other
people remember Marie Louise as a spoiled and bratty child which I think
Sargent captured in the psychological intensity which she glares at us from
the composition. She looks almost as if she could bend a spoon, but the lack of
relationship between sister and brother here between the siblings is also
something we see in the Boits. Some scholars have suggested that this reflects Sargent's awareness of
contemporary theories about the distinct psychologies of children, but it's not
just modern psychology that's represented here. Again Sargent is
looking back to the old masters giving all of these children the
self-possession and aplomb of one of Velázquez's en fontes. I'm showing
you another one here on the right, a painting now in Vienna. The Boit girls
aren't dressed up like characters from an old painting. They are instead
distinctly modern. They're wearing pinafores and sturdy shoes, the kinds of
things they would have worn while they were at play, or in the schoolroom. They're
not dressed up as you might expect, and they're not wearing silk like
Marie-Louise Pailleron was, they wear no crinoline or corsets. They're not
dressed for a public event. That outfit and mysteriousness adds to
the sense of privacy that Sargent manages to communicate here. If we're talking about the private
world of these girls it seems only fair to introduce you to them. From left to
right, Mary Louisa, called Isa like her mother was born in Paris in 1874,
and was eight years old when the painting was made. Florence, called
Florrie who was leaning against the vase born in Newport who's 14. Jane next to
her called Genie who was 12, and Julia is sitting on the floor. She was born in
Soisy just outside of Paris in 1877, and she was four years old when the
painting was made. What you may not know is that the Boits had an older
brother. An older brother who was not with them in Paris, an older brother who
had developed a mental illness that caused him to be institutionalized from
the age of six for the rest of his life. This is the Berry Home for
feeble-minded children in central Massachusetts, where Neddy Boit lived. It must have been heartbreaking to leave
that child behind, but the Boits were following the advice of the most
reputable physicians of their day. Neddy Boit died in 1888 some years after
the painting was made. What became of the rest of them? Here's Isa Cushing Boit again. The
family lived mostly in Paris, but returned to Boston occasionally for
visits and for a long visit in 1886 to 1888 mostly to introduce their eldest
daughter Florence into society. Its at that time that Sargent stayed with
the Boit family in Boston in their beacon hill town house. It was his first working
trip to America, and while he was there he painted this portrait of his hostess
Isa Boit, clearly capturing her vivacious personality. You can see that she's
almost laughing in this portrait. Henry James though worried what critics would
say about Sargent's portrait of his friend. In fact, when this painting
was shown in London in 1888, they called it, "a Velázquez vulgarized." The
Boit's continued their peripatetic lifestyle as the girls grew up. They
moved from Paris, to Poe, to Biarritz, to Italy, Normandy, Brittany, and so on. Their
travels recorded in Ned Boit's watercolors. Isa Boit died in Dinard in
Brittany in 1894. In 1897 Edward Boit married a second time, and soon bought a
country estate in Italy near Vallombrosa, which you see here at upper right, where
the family spent summers for many many years. I'm showing you a photograph of
Boit with the two sons he had with his second wife. In April 1902 Boit's wife
died in Paris following the birth of their younger son and Ned Boit came back
to the United States with his family, and in 1903 he built an elegant house in
Brookline, Massachusetts. Which you see here at lower right, next door to his
brother, but Ned and his daughters didn't like America and after a few years they
return to Europe spending their winters in Paris or Rome and their summers in
Tuscany. Boit continued to paint and he maintained his friendship with Sargent.
Twice in 1909 and in 1912 Boit and Sargent held joint displays of their
watercolors. I'm showing you Ned Boit's view of Park Avenue in New York
from 1911 at the upper right and Sargent's view, very elegant view I might
say, of Italian laundry at the lower right. Sargent painted Boit's
portrait in 1908 which you see at the left. In april 1915 Ned Boit
died in Rome and Henry James wrote, "one wonders about those queer
charming girls and their Tuscan territory." I want to tell you very
briefly what happened to the girls who seemed so immortal in Sargent's portrait. Here's Florence as she appears in
the painting and on the right later in life. In 1888 just after
Florence came out and made her debut in society, Henry James wrote of the girls in
practicality and added that it pointed to an early return to Europe which he
called these unmatrimonial shores. In fact, none of these four girls ever did
marry. Although I would point out to you that this fact does not mean they were
unhappy. It's sometimes pointed out in art
history books that Florence, the eldest, had some sort of mental problems, but at
least one person who wrote of her from firsthand experience said there was no
sign of any such thing. I can only assume that it was her enthusiasm for
golf which she took up in Poe to pass the time. You see her here at the top-right
in Wellesley, Massachusetts in the eighteen nineties where she frequently
visited her aunt and uncle. She brought her golf clubs with her and
1892 only to discover that there was no golf course anywhere to be found, so she
talked her uncle into making one on the front lawn of their Wellesley estate, and she helped supervise the job. Then her uncle, Arthur Honeywell, who liked the
game really a lot started the golf course at the Country Club in Brookline. Today one of the most exclusive in the United States and one admittedly helped
in its founding by a woman referred to as the lady from Poe, the lady from
Poe is Florence Boit. Sister Jane did have some mental health issues that caused
her parents grave concern but she did live independently with companions until
she was 85 years old. Coming to the United States with her
surviving sisters just before the Second World War. Mary Louisa, who you see here in
the painting and in some later images of her, a photograph at center, and a
watercolor by her sister at lower right. Mary Louisa lived with her younger
sister Julia. She loved music and she played the harp. Julia, the little
girl who sits on the floor, lived a long and active life. She didn't die until
nineteen sixty-nine, when she was over 90 years old. She had a vibrant sense of fun
and I think you can see that from her photograph dressed up as a character
from The Mikado at the right, and at the lower left one of her own watercolors.
One of my favorite ones because of course that shows girls dressed up in
pinafores. Was it foreshadowed in Sargent's
painting that all four of these girls would stay unmarried? Some people want to
see it that way but to me it seems impossible really to take a likeness of
a little girl and use it to predict her entire future. I've discussed these issues more
completely in the book, but I do want to point out that the Boit's situation as
unmarried women was not at all as unusual as many people think. There were
many unmarried women in the late 19th century for a variety of reasons. In
fact, Boston was particularly known for its accomplished single women. It's
mighty maidens, as the writer Helen Howe put it. The Boit's with a trust fund
an entertaining circle of friends didn't need to marry for money and they didn't
need to marry for companionship. They may have been too European for the
Bostonians and too Bostonian for the Europeans. Sargent's mysterious
canvas is encouraged a wide variety of interpretations over the course of the
20th century, with our own willingness to analyze and speak openly about private
things. These analyses have become increasingly psychological in nature. It's convenient that whether or not
Sargent intended it that way, the ages of the girls allow viewers to read
narrative into this painting showing the transition from childhood with Julia open sunny sitting on the floor
looking at us, to adolescents Florence hiding in the shadows and turning away.
Each girl is separated from the other by light, or shadows, or geometry. We come
upon them almost as if we're intruding on their private space, and have a sense
that they seem to retreat into the shadows that they are perhaps keeping
secrets from us. More than one well-known author of a cultural history of American
art has described this painting as an image of sex and subservience, of
obedient girls who are returning the gaze of their father, who monitors them from
outside the canvas. While other writers have, of course, taken these writers to task, but I
do want to mention that these ideas seem a very long way away from Sargent's artistic intent and also from what Henry James described as, "the happy
play world of a family of charming children." I'd remind you that instead
of restricting himself to the facts Sargent is capturing here a world of
wonder that seems reminiscent of the mysterious spaces mirrors and changes of
scale and Lewis Carroll's immensely popular children's books. Here are illustrations from Alice Through
the Looking Glass which both Sargent, who had younger sisters, and the Boit
girls no doubt knew. This mystery continues to fascinate all of us even a
hundred and twenty years later, which I think is one of the characteristics that
really does make this picture a masterpiece. Sargent first displayed it with a
simple title, Portraits of Children, in Paris in December 1882 in an
international exhibition organized by the art dealer George Petite, whose
gallery you see here at the right. Petite showed modern paintings of a
certain type by younger artists from many countries. Boldini from Italy,
Lieberman from Germany, Stott from England, Stewart an American, Albert Edelfelt a Fin. There were none of them as radical as the Impressionists, but they
were all more avant-garde than the painters you usually saw at the salon. The
important French critic Paul Monts praised the Boit portrait for its charm
describing it in detail and saying that its combination of pink and green
and white in the figure of Julia on the floor was an homage to the color
harmonies of Velázquez. Monts explained that Sargent's artistic goal
was the painting of white in various degrees of light and shadow, and he praised the picture for
its success. The subsequent exhibition history
of the painting is tightly linked to another one of Sargent's portraits. Since
1881 when he had first met her, Sargent had wanted to paint a portrait of Madame
Gautreau who you see here on the right in a pencil drawing, in the collection
at Harvard. She was a society beauty who you see here sprawled on a sofa. Sargent had hoped to have Madame Gautreau's portrait completed in time for the
salon of 1883, where he planned to show it together with another portrait, but
neither of those two paintings was finished in time. In their place Sargent showed the Boits at the 1883
salon. Sargent's father wrote, "John has sent to the salon a portrait, or rather
four portraits of children in one picture. A comment that predicted what the
critics would say about the composition. The painting gained a lot of
attention, and i'm showing it to you here with a satirical cartoon that was
published on the occasion of its display at the salon. Lots of paintings were
teased in this way. The caption reads grand unpacking of porcelain, Chinese
objects, children's toys etc, etc. You can see that the caricaturist responded to
the figures of the girls by pretending they were dolls stuck on mannequins. The likenesses of the girls and
Sargent's abilities as a painter were praised, but critics regarded this
compositional arrangement as unconventional and somewhat eccentric. They were mystified by the lack of connection between the four girls. One
French critic praised the characterization of each individual girl
but he lamented Sargent's lack of finish and he said it seems to have been
composed according to new rules. The rules of the four corners game. Four
corners game is sort of like musical chairs where everybody runs around until
you just told to stop wherever you are. Another critic
described it as four corners and a void. The art amateur in English language
magazine said, "it represents a little girl, a baby, half a girl, about five eigths
of a girl, and two tall japanese spit vases spotted about in a vast expanse of
canvas. All this is very well as showing the artist clever manipulation of
effects, but what in the world has it to do with portraiture?" Sargent set
out to prove his skill as a portraitist the following year, planning to show the
last completed portraits of Mrs. White, which you'll recognize, I hope, from
the collection of the Corcoran gallery here in Washington. Mrs. White was the
wife of a Paris educated American diplomat and on the right that last
finished portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau wearing black, the Louisiana
born wife of a Parisian banker. I want to remind you that these Americans
in Paris provided Sargent with many of his early portrait commissions.
Early in 1884, before the salon opened, Sargent with the encouragement of Henry
James began to explore the portrait market in England. By February he had
already accepted a commission to paint a number of portraits of the Vicar's
family. In May the critical notoriety surrounding Sargent painting of
Madame Gautreau put an effective end to his portrait commissions in Paris. Since he had been exploring the idea of moving to England anyway, he left Paris
behind him. But what happened? Virginie Avegno, who as I
said was from New Orleans, had moved to Paris with her mother after
her father died during the Civil War. Showing you her house and at the top
with one of her family members standing the balcony. That's all Angela Parlong of the Gautreau family and a photograph of Virginia at lower
right. She married a Parisian banker and
she was known for her beauty. She was a very celebrated and self-conscious bell.
The American painter Edwin Simmons who was then a student at the academy Julia
and Paris described her, "she was black as spades and white as milk,
something about her gave you the impression of infinite proportion,
infinite grace, and infinite balance. Every artist wanted to portray her in
marble or paint." Sargent met Madam Gautreau late in 1882. He too became
obsessed with her and he finally convinced her to let him paint her
portrait. He worked on it for a long time. He represented her as she wanted to
be seen, as a quintessential Parisien sophisticated, perfectly groomed,
elegantly dressed, urban, and independent. I'm showing you a French picture now,
called actually La Parisien from exactly the same year, 1883. On your right a painting now in the Petit Palais in Paris, by the French portraitist Charles Giron.
Here we are too beautiful elegant Parisiens, but what was one to make of a
Parisian who wasn't French? Critics likely could not wait to say to Madame
Gautreau's portrait what they would never say to her face. Sargent's friend
Vernon Lee described the painting at the salon as, "surrounded by
shoals of astonished and jiving women." One critic wrote, "of all the ladies in
undress the only one of interest is Sargent's, interesting for its attention
to the fine profile, reminiscent of Piero della
Francesca, interesting for its décolletage and its chains of silver
which are indecent and give the impression that they are about to fall
down, interesting for the powder that makes her skin cadaverous and clownish
at the same time." I'm showing you on the right again one of these satiric
cartoons. The caption reads, "here's the new model for the ace of hearts."
While many people profess to be shocked by this portrait, shocked! But, it's really
hard for me to believe that the French could be shocked by something so subtle.
I'm showing you on the left a painting by Henri Gervex called Lola from 1878. A
painting that was rejected by the salon jury in 1878 for being too sexy, but it
was immediately shown to the public anyway in a commercial establishment and
became incredibly famous. On the right a painting by Charles Chaplin, one of the leading
painters and teachers in Paris of the period. It's called "Ecstasy" and it dates from
the 1870s. Okay, these aren't portraits, but let's look at work by the most
famous international portraitists of the generation before Sargent. This is Franz Xaver Winterhalter. On the left, a portrait of Madame Rimsky-Korsakov,
the wife of the composer, and on the right Sisi the Empress of Austria. Both
of these from the mid eighteen sixties, and both of them very sexy with bared
shoulders. Here are two other portraits in poor reproductions that were
shown at the 1884 salon with Madame Gautreau in black
off-the-shoulder dresses. I would propose to you that the real issue here is
nationality. A premonition of the hostile reception accorded to Sargent's portrait
appeared in 1881 in this society journal Illustration. Cynical, if humorous, words were
sparked when an American horse won the Grand-Pré at Longchamp for the first time. The article goes, "I know since the victory of Foxhall - that's the horse - one
determine French patriot who can no longer without a lot of grumbling save
the name America. He finds the Yankees a bit unbecoming. They have painters who
carry off our metals like Mr. Sargent, beautiful women who eclipse our's like
Madame Gautreau, and horses that beat our steeds. It's a peaceful war but they come
to hoist their victory colors over our land." Well, Sargent and Madame Gautreau had
similar aims. They both wanted to be the best not only in the colony of Americans
but in all of Paris, and to a great extent they both succeeded, but there was
one obstacle that they could never overcome, and that was they could
never be French. Sargent recovered but it took him awhile. He went to
England in June 1884 to take up a large portrait commissioned from the Vicar's
family, as I mentioned a family that earned its wealth from an armament and
engineering firm. I'm showing his first portrait of the Vicar's family, the
Misses Vickers, Evelyn, and Mabel, and Mildred, who were in their mid to late teens when
Sargent painted them. It almost recalls the portrait of the
Boit's in its shadowy spaces, psychological tension, and sense of a
circular relationship between the girls that somehow is kept secret from the
viewer. The painting was shown in both
Paris and in London. While it was received well in Paris, in England it was
considered, " beastly French." It was voted the worst picture of
the year. Sargent, I believe, deliberately and
self-consciously reinvented himself as an English painter. I'm showing you here
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose from 1886, from the Tate. It was the painting with which
he was able to establish his artistic reputation in England, and it remains
Sargent's best-known, most beloved English painting. He started in the
summer of 1885, and finished it the following year. It was shown at the Royal
Academy in 1887. The rehearsal for it was a portrait sketch that he had made of
Dorothy and Billy Vicar, more children of the Vicar's family, Sargent's
important British patrons, but then he refined the composition, changed the
children in it, made lots of sketches. In the end representing Polly and
Dolly Barnard, who were the daughters of a friend of Sargent's and a painter, just
like the Boits. Sargent carefully studied the composition made, as I said, lots of
sketches for it. We see a photograph of him here working on it outside now, in an
impressionist mode. I'd remind you that Sargent knew Monet and Monet
even visited Sargent in England at this time. Sargent was interested very much
in light effects, as you can see here. With the daylight fading and the
lanterns beginning to glow. But Sargent was also very careful to do something
else, which was to connect his work with contemporary English taste. He no longer
wanted to be considered beastly French. He balanced himself between
impressionism and its concern with transient light effects, and English
garden paintings. The title Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose comes from a British
popular song and i'm comparing it for you here with two British works. William Stotts, Girl in a Meadow, from
1880 now in the Tate and a Burne-Jones tapestry called, Flora at lower right. The aura of innocence, the lyrical
exploration of the hidden world of childhood has now been transformed
and transferred into an English country garden. The painting was a great popular
success, it was immediately purchased for the nation, and Sargent aimed to
continue his ambition as a portraitist, and in that area too he reinvented himself as an English
painter. This beguiling haunting beauty Gertrude Vernon, Lady Agnew was
convalescing from an illness, but her fragile looks and those beautiful
slashes of white and purple paint confirmed Sargent's reputation as a
portraitist in England. He had, by the time he showed this work in 1892, all
of London at his feet. With Lady Agnew we see that
Sargent turned toward English history for his pictorial inspiration, adopting as
his model the poetic half-length portraits of women that had
been popularized in the 18th century by artists like Joshua Reynolds, whose work
you see at upper right, and Romney, whose work you see at lower right. He chose his
models carefully. Sargent's 18th Century vocabulary was closely bound to popular
taste both in England and in America where these 18th century and Rococo styles
were being revived in architecture, furniture, and fashion. Sargent chose
British old master models for men, as well. This is 1900 portrait of the 22
year old Lord Dalhousie, Arthur Ramsay. You can see the kind of authority that
Sargent gave to his sitters, particularly to men. Classical settings
to give them that timeless look, very assured elegance and arrogance, and Dalhousie has shown to be a worthy heir to his ancestors whose portraits no
doubt hung on the same stairway in the manor house that this Sargent portrait
would hang in, and in fact still does. Equally Sargent posts himself as a
worthy heir to Van Dyke. I'm showing you on the right Van Dyke's portrait of
the British Lord John and Bernard Stewart from about 1630 in the National
Gallery. 1899 was the 300th anniversary of Van Dyke's birth, and there was a
large exhibition of his work in London which we know Sargent saw. Here again,
he's updating tradition in a different vocabulary. This proved to be an irresistible
formula, and would-be sitters flocked to Sargent's studio. You can see them lined
up here in a cartoon by Max Beerbohm from about 1900. I'm showing you at
the lower left and lower right a view of that studio as it appears today. What
happens when Sargent wants to paint American portraits? Does this British
formula work in the United States? Was Sargent, in fact, as James had asked an
American painter? While the formula was indeed viable for Americans, as you can
see in this comparison, of Sargent's portrait on the left of Henry Higgenson
from 1903, a leading Boston philanthropist and founder of the Boston Symphony
Orchestra. I'm showing you on the right a different Van Dyke portrait which
may have been Sargent's model. It's a more modest non aristocratic sitter that
seems more suitable for an American sitter then these aristocratic Van
Dyke's in their silks and satins. But there might be other sources for
Sargent's American works, as well. I would propose to you that Sargent seems
to have been thinking about a different 18th century prototype for his American
sitters, John Singleton Copley. Showing the Higgenson portrait at center and
on the left, Copley's Ezekiel gold plate, and on the right Copley's Eliazar Ting from the National Gallery. In the United States, patriotism enhanced
by the nation's centennial in 1876 had added local intensity to Europe's 18th
century revival. Families dusted off their grandmothers chippendale high
chest and gateleg tables and they used them in modern interiors to confirm
their connection to the society of the founding fathers. Copley's work also
regained status, fueled by that colonial revival and an attempt to
create a distinctive taxonomy of American culture in an age of
globalization. Copley was heralded both as the chronicler of the American
aristocracy, and also as America's first old master. It was true for women again. Here's
Sargent's portrait of Sarah Sears at the center from 1899. Sarah Sears had hoped
to have Sargent painter her for a number of years and she finally sat for him in
London 1899. We recognize specific props from Sargent's studio, you can see the same chair in the portrait of Lady Agnew on the left. Sarah Sears is an American version
of Lady Agnew, but I would argue filtered a little bit through Copley, who's
Dorothy Quincy you see it right, that gesture of thoughtfulness and restraint.
I'd remind you that Sargent himself was descended from one of Copley sitters.
A painting I hope you know well, this is Copley's Epes Sargent from 1760
in the National Gallery, and it is the same Sargent family. In fact, many of
Sargent's American patrons had Copley's in their family trees just like many of his
English patrons had ancestral portraits by Reynolds. Here in the center Sargent's
portrait of Mrs. Charles Pelham Curtis, upper-left Copley's portrait of Charles
Pelham, and on the upper right Copley's portrait of Henry Pelham. Yes, the same
Pelham family, or a painting you might recognize. Copley's
Sarah Jackson at upper right, Mrs. Henderson Inches, sorry Miss Sara Jackson is at upper left,
Mrs. Henderson Inches, and your own beautiful Mrs. George Watson Elizabeth
Oliver who was given through the family of Henderson Inches, and in the center,
Sargent's Mrs. Charles Inches, the same family painted in Boston in 1887.
American critics were quick to draw a direct line of descent from Copley to
Sargent. The Boston transcript credited Sargent with improving on Copley's
attainments noting that Copley was, "ever so much of a painter, but he could
never even in this paulius days have executed it with the superb breath, ease,
and virtuosity which Sargent displays in every detail." I hope you've enjoyed following
this international journey from Boston, to Paris, to London, and in fact back to
Boston again. One that reflects the International stories of both Sargent
and his sitters. A story that by its very cosmopolitanism, by its ability to adapt
Spain, England, France different visual vocabularies in its way seems
quintessentially American. I hope these ideas might inspire you to come to
Boston in November. We're opening on November 20th. When we open our new wing
of Art of the Americas, which you can see here the Boit's now proudly displayed in
this beautiful new building, that I hope you'll all come see. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I would be happy to
take questions if anybody has any. I've been encouraged to ask you to
come to the microphone if you do because this lecture is being webcast. If anybody
has questions. If you don't want to go to the microphone I will repeat your
question, if you would prefer to stay seated. God, I got you all convinced. You believe all that? Good. The question is about a fabulous
painting in the National Gallery's collection that I didn't talk about
tonight called Repose, which is actually a, it's not really a portrait, but
Sargent's neice posed for it. You might know it, she's wearing a cashmere shawl
and sort of leaning back on a sofa. I agree with you, it's one of the most
splendid pieces of painting I think Sargent ever did. It's very, very
beautiful. There isn't really so much of a story behind it that I can tell you
tonight, except that I can tell you that I'm fascinated by how many times
Sargent makes paintings of people lying down. I think he's fascinated with
that foreshortening of the figure, with how to get that right, which is really,
really hard. To show a figure sort of feet first, so to say, to keep it all in
proportion and to make it also look beautiful and not strange at all. The
other thing that Sargent plays with in that particular composition is fabrics.
Another one of his favorite things. The textures in that, of the shawl and
the damask stripe sofa that she leans against, all of those textures are
delineated with these incredible broad strokes of paint that I really thinks
show Sargent and his best. You're very lucky to have such a wonderful
picture like that in your neighborhood. Yes, in the back. That's a very good question. Did Sargent
paint quickly? Can I give you an idea of how long some of these portraits took?
The answer is he painted quickly when he wanted to, and that some things took an
extremely long time. The Boit portrait, which is enormous, as I said, seven feet square, seems to
have been done in less than six weeks. It is incredibly quickly painted, which you
can see when you look at it, because if you look carefully at the background
it's the thinnest wash of brown that defines those shadowy mysterious
spaces and then these great streaks that just define the edges of walls or the
gilded architectural decoration of the room. The girls are much more closely worked,
but even they are very quickly done and you can see it. You can see the brushwork.
Madame Gautreau, on the other hand is very very worked. If you look at it up
close, you can see that he paints that profile and then he paints that profile
again and then he comes in with the background to make that profile sharper.
it's, I think, there's good cause to believe he actually repainted the entire
background in that picture. You can see the evidence in the canvas. The paint
is very, very thick and worked and very very different from these great slashing
strokes of white that you see in the Boit girls. Marie-Louis Piron said it took
eighty three sittings for her picture. Other people's, Sargent did in four. I
think it depended a lot on what he wanted to say, and how cooperative his
sitter was, and how much time you have to do it. Back to the painting of the black dress. At one point, the right shower was off the shoulder. Now, what caused him to paint the strap on the shoulder? The question is about the portrait of Madame Gautreau, and if you see it now at the Metropolitan, her diamond
straps are both on her shoulders but at the time it was shown at the salon in Paris
one of them was shown down here. The question is what made him repaint it? I think he was embarrassed to tell you
the honest truth. I think he reworked that picture quite a lot. It's not clear to me, and I don't know if
we'll ever be able to figure out when he repainted the strap, if he also repainted the background. Which
seems to, at one point in that composition, to have been a sort of teal
blue instead of that sort of sandy color that it is now. I think he
was embarrassed, Sargent was somebody who was a very instinctual painter and
when people responded badly he didn't know how to react to that and stood back.
We see a couple of instances of that over the course of his life. Yes. The question is: how accessible is Sargent's
London studio to the public? The answer is it isn't. It belongs to a
portrait painter, a prominent society portraitist in London, and if you have
the right friends you can weasel your way in there. Occasionally he does
open it up for tours for special groups, but it's not open to the public. In the
back on the aisle. The question is about Sargent and Aikens
who are often compared since they were both actively making portraits at this
time. I'm not really aware of any connection. They might certainly have
met. Sargent's family was from Philadelphia and Aikens spent his
whole career pretty much in Philadelphia, but there's no documented evidence that
they really had an artistic relationship, or that they worked together. One of my
colleagues likes to describe all American artist being divided between
gooey and crunchy. Aikens is crunchy and Sargent is gooey. Yes. That's a very good comment and I didn't
talk about that tonight. The comment is about Sargent's incorporation of
Japanese ideas about design principles in the way that he arranged the figures
in that composition. The answer I can give you is Sargent was a sponge, and he
is interested in everything. He certainly knows Japanese prints. They're all over
Paris at this point, and he takes in things from Japanese prints, things from
the old masters, things from to Degas, things from photography. All of them
are mixed up in his blender, so to say and come out in such a way that it's
impossible to really only pull out one thread. But it's a very perceptive
comment, and yes I do think Sargent was very aware of Japanese design principles at this period. I'm going to take one more question. Yes, on the aisle. The question is how
did the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston come to acquire the Boit portrait? The
answer is in the best possible way. The girls gave it to us. I mentioned that
that the Boit family had come back to Boston in the early 20th century and
that Ned had built this house in Brookline, Massachusetts. The painting
apparently was there. It was in 1912 that the family decided that they just didn't
want to live in Boston anymore and Ned sold the house and moved back to Italy,
which is where he died three years later. He didn't take the painting back with
him. In 1912, they lent the painting to the MFA. It's been
at the MFA since 1912 and the four girls gave it to us in
1919. Let that be a shining example to all of you potential museum donors. That how much a
gift like that can mean, thank you.
