“Sargent and Paris” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Author: Jonathan Goodman
Installation view, Sargent and Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 27-August 3, 2025. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The large, accomplished show called "Sargent and Paris" is offering its audience a good chance to experience and understand the observant nature of John Singer Sargent, a highly gifted painter. In the exhibition, which is devoted entirely to portrait paintings indoors and out, the privacies of the upper class are exquisitely described. The women, especially, are given close attention, clothed in dark, rich dresses, whose combination of affluence and subtle erotic tension results in a memorable sensuality.
Sargent, who was trained in Paris, spent most of a very comfortable life on the Continent. This show, devoted to the time he spent in Paris, includes many single-figure studies, which tend to emphasize the delicate folds of clothing, highlighting the physical beauty of the models, the young men and women scions of affluence and taste. The ambience is well-to-do, to the point where the paintings seem as if they are code talismans of those coming from high society. Leisure and comfort speak dramatically in these paintings of an enviable class status.
Having noted the grand spectrum of most of the scenes, which are set in opulence indoors and a country gentleman's ease outdoors. Leisurely scenes on the beach charm us with images of undressed small children, overseen by a matron or mother.
But Sargent's so greatly emphasizes unequivocal pleasure, we can wonder about the depth of the art. Sargent is an exquisite artist of enviable ease, but does the grandeur lead to images of transcendence? Again and again, we see exquisitely painted scenes manifesting self-involvement, in which the implications of status on a high key drown out any sense of intellectual speculation or emotional reach beyond material joy. This is extraordinary art we see, but we move beyond a gilded surface.
One might argue that the question of depth is itself a secondary query, whose pursuit is not meant to move beyond the pleasures of attractive people in expensive clothing and scenes devoted to fabulous ease. Today, with our bias against the upper classes, Sargent's point of view can seem naive, even provocative in its careless display of the high class. Beauty, supported by generous amounts of economic support, comes first.
If we look at the works, we find that from the beginning, Sargent can be understood as a technical standout. In the beautifully captured Study for the Bust at Lillê (1877), a version of a wax bust at the museum there, Sargent has portrayed a beautiful young woman with dark, lank hair, her torso narrowing as her body moves downward from her neck. The background is a matte yellow, and the feeling works in the direction of historicism and classical restraint. We cannot forget the sheer skill of Sargent's abilities, although perhaps for more than a few contemporary viewers, the piece might exist in a standstill, taken over by a realism that, in its suggestion of rigidity, is close to archaic in feeling.
A very beautiful painting of music-making is called Orchestra and the Cirque d'Hiver (ca. 1879-80); it portrays an orchestra at the bottom of the composition and up through the right. The dark brown clothing of the musicians contrasts with the white of the music on paper. In the upper left is a small number of listeners, sitting in an arena setting. The work is an outstanding study in contrasts, and also a celebration of music, considered a high point of the culture Sargent belonged to. It doesn't look like suffering entered into any way into the artist's repertoire. Instead, he established as highly finished an atmosphere as he might, forgoing distress for the privileged pleasures of the moment.
The third and last work to be considered is the marvelous open air composition titled In the Luxembourg Gardens (1879), in which a well-dressed couple strolls on a ground of light gravel, with a cement divider, a large vase raided on top of the barrier the left, gives way to another area for walking before moving into the dark green of the grandees. j and accompanying trees. Bits of red offer contrast; the scene is a study in differing hues, as well as a celebration of nature as high culture. In Sargent's hand, art and the outside world can merge in ways that do honor to both.
To summarize, Sargent delights with the skills of his hand. He is particularly good at painting the clothing of the affluent. His atmospheres establish a degree of ease that is highly class-oriented. But he portrays his privileges so well, it is easy to take part in his esteem for a life apparently without care, of a privileged life. It is a mistake to seek social issues in an aesthetic devoted to a late 19th-century paradise. Instead, we can enjoy Sargent's unusually prolific outlook, his gift for muted color, and his clear eye for a particular stratum of class. He cannot be faulted for these attributes, even if the good life sometimes grows repetitive.
About the author: Jonathan Goodman is a New York City-based writer.
(Image note below, installation photos by Espresso Reviews).
