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Possessions And Props: The Collection Of John Singer Sargent

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2001 by Trevor Fairbrother

Soon after the death of the painter John Singer Sargent in 1925, his two younger sisters sold a tremendous variety of items from his estate at the London auction firm of Christie, Manson and Woods. The renowned and successful artist had been a bachelor for whom collecting art and antiques was a lifelong passion. His interests ranged from crimson and gold Genoese velvets to an avant-garde male nude sculpture by Auguste Rodin (Pl. II). Although his sisters retained much for themselves, they gave the auctioneers sufficient material to dominate four different sales. The first was a two-day auction of pictures that included more than 140 works by Sargent and more than 80 by other artists. The second, comprised of 120 lots, many with multiple items, included furniture, sculpture, embroideries, fabrics, carpets, and tapestries. A library encompassing literature, poetry, works on history, travel, art, architecture, and design was sold as 239 lots in the third sale; and 6 lots of prints and 51 lots of frames from Sarg ent's estate appeared in the fourth sale. [1]

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Two key paintings, both featured as photogravures in the catalogue of the pictures sale, were dramatically withdrawn on the first day, when it was announced that they had been secured for the British national collection: one was the striking, unfinished replica Madame Gautreau (Virginie Avegno; P1. I), which Sir Joseph Duveen (1869-1939) purchased for the new wing he was building at the Tate Gallery, and the other was Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood of about 1885, which Sargent's sisters donated to the Tate Gallery. "Sargent hunger" overtook the salesrooms; the pictures alone fetched [pound]182,585, and the price records for Sargent's work and modern art in general were "wiped out." [2]

Of the first seventy-five watercolors in the first auction, the splendid Venetian scene on the cover and in Plate VIII sold for [pound]4,830--almost a hundred times the price the artist might have asked. [3] In the context of this article--an overview of Sargent's collection--this scene may be considered a distillation of his multifaceted interests beyond the portrait studio. It reflects his keen eye for architectural and decorative style, his adaptation of some aspects of impressionism, and his broad sensual engagement with European, particularly Italian, life and culture. We see Sargent relish the painted walls and slow green water of Venice; we sense his poetic enjoyment of the differences between a Renaissance monument and the humble canal at its rear. An ambitious muralist himself, Sargent knew that this haunting building housed a magnificent decorative cycle by Tintoretto. Thus, the painting embodies the watchful, thinking sensibility that underpins and complicates all aspects of Sargent's outward bril liance.

Sargent's collecting instincts developed during his youth, which was rich in cultural experiences although lacking the anchor of a fixed abode. His expatriate parents rented a succession of modestly genteel accommodations across Europe. His mother, an enthusiastic tourist and amateur watercolorist, steered the family's quest for edification. During their travels the Sargents encouraged their son to sketch and to collect photographs and illustrations. In 1869, at the age of thirteen, he assembled images from visits to Rome, Naples, and Munich in an album given to him by his mother, his themes included Greek and Roman poets, the first Caesars, and classical statues. [4]

A decade later, after professional training in Paris, Sargent emerged as a society portraitist. Portraiture had recently become the most profitable artistic genre, reflecting the desire of a burgeoning international merchant class to imitate the old aristocracy. Commissions flowed to Sargent after his portrait of another fashionable portraitist--his dandyish teacher Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran (1837-1917)--won an honorable mention at the Paris Salon of 1879. [5]

Given his peripatetic youth, Sargent was probably eager for a well-appointed Parisian domain of his own. By 1883 he could afford to rent a newly built house and studio on a fashionable stretch of Boulevard Berthier. His friend the writer Vernon Lee (Violet Paget; 1856-1935) found the establishment "extremely pretty, quite aesthetic and English," and noted its William Morris wallpapers and rugs. [6] A photograph of Sargent in his workplace (Fig. 1) reveals the early direction of his collections: numerous textiles and rugs complement a doorway decorated with Japanesque fan motifs and topped with ceramics and elaborately dressed Japanese dolls. Judging from studio portraits of other Parisian artists, Sargent's was relatively uncluttered, reflecting, perhaps, his interest in the aesthetic movement. He poses with Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), defending the essential classical refinement of the portrait, which recent Salon visitors had pocked as a high-strung, vulgar, modem statement. High on the wall behind i t, hanging over his beloved piano, is Sargent's copy of Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez's Antonio el Ingles, the portrait of a dwarf courtier with a dog. [7] In essence, the photograph presents a well-dressed serious young artist whose studio was an attractive promotional extension of his business. Absent is a sense of Sargent's nascent interest in eighteenth-century furniture, even though he had already begun to use fine gilded French examples as props in his portraits, such as Mrs. Henry White of 1883. [8] In the mid-1880s the resourceful, budget-minded Sargent agreed to paint the young French artist Jacques Emile Blanche (1861-1942) in exchange for an armchair and an inlaid desk of the Louis XV period. [9]

Possessions And Props: The Collection Of John Singer Sargent

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2001 by Trevor Fairbrother

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