'Lady Agnew of Lochnaw' by John Singer Sargent

[Music] this is the portrait of lady agne by John Singer Sergeant it's one of the most popular portraits in the gallery's collection it was the portrait that helped launch Sargeant as a Portrait Painter in Britain and was also the portrait which launched lady agnu in society [Music] according to Legend she walked into the studio one day and slumped down in a chair and uh Sergeant really liked to capture the most naturalistic post for his sitters and so he decided to paint the portrait exactly as she was on that first day the painting is a hybrid of English aestheticism and French impressionism and one's expected to look at the portrait and think of it not just as a portrait but as a pleasing aesthetic [Music] object what we get here is an almost effortless paint application that it appears that he's gone in he's understood the sitter he's applied the paint and it's just sort of happened but as it's generally the case with works by Sergeant when you start looking much more closely you realize that there's a there has been a struggle within the process and that there is a myriad of small adjustments small changes so for example on lady agnu when you start looking closely around this the uh sash area you start to see where the artist has made changes where does how high did the sash go up how tight how small was the waist is this an exaggeration we don't know but he certainly has spent some time redefining that that area similarly with the pendant you can just about see here a slight Shadow which indicates the pendant at some point was actually hanging lower so he obviously felt from a visual perspective it made more sense it balance better by having the pendant hanging at a higher height we also see some alterations in this area here and also some repositioning around the neckline where the artist has gone back and and redefined the outline and per possibly even down the side of the face the face is much more carefully painted than the rest of the portrait however the portrait is generally designed to be seen at a distance so if you look in closely at the detail you see that it's the details like the flowers on the chair are very roughly painted but when you move away from the portrait they come together and they look like proper flowers when this was first painted it was in high demand for loan allegedly The Story Goes that on loan to the Grafton Gallery um on its return it sustained a damage a tear in fact in in this part of in this part of the painting close examination now we know there is a tear there it's obviously been repaired a long time ago the owner was really quite annoyed and there's an excellent quote where he says they they that is the Grafton Gallery they were anxious enough to get my most valued picture and to reap the benefit of its presence on their walls but as soon as they have done with it they show a singular indifference to the safe delivery to the owner lady agnu was around about 26 or 27 when this portrait was done and she has this very kind of dominating presence a lot of people find her POS very seductive although we know that at the time she actually was um suffering from this very long illness despite the fact she looks quite fragile in this painting she was really quite a feisty individual and she was what one might describe as a new woman um of the late 19th century she led a very extravagant lifestyle and in fact she um spent a lot of the agony fortune and in the end she was rather sadly obliged to sell the painting in order to make some money for [Music] herself

Channel: nationalgalleries

Views: 71,637

Keywords: John Singer Sargent, Scottish National Gallery, Frances Fowle, Jacqueline Ridge, Conservation, American Impressionism

Id: beGSYKKI2oU

Length: 4min 27sec (267 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 01 2014