John Singer Sargent and Robert Louis Stevenson

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2004 by Leslie Furth

(10) Quoted in Ormond and Kilmurray. John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, p. 167, No. 162.

(11) Quoted ibid.

(12) Quoted ibid., p. 168.

(13) "Art Exhibitions," Illustrated London News, vol. 90 (April 9, 1887), p. 406, cited in Marc Simpson with Richard Ormond and H. Barbara Weinberg. Uncanny Spectacle. The Public Career of the Young John Singer Sargent (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown Massachusetts, and Yale University Press, New Haven, 1997), p. 147.

(14) Robert Louis Stevenson. "Talk and Talkers: Second Paper," in Memories and Portraits (1887; Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1917), pp. 175-176.

(15) Quoted in Philip Callow, Louis: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2001), p. 196.

(16) Illustrated in Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, pp. 230-231, No. 230.

(17) Illustrated in Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Complete Paintings, Volume Two; Portraits of the 1890s (published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002), pp. 122-124, No. 337.

(18) For the generalized preoccupation with conjugal relationships in Victorian art and culture, see Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Problem Pictures: Women and Men in Victorian Painting (Aldershot, Hampshire, England, and Scolar Press, Brookfield, Vermont, 1995), p. 49. Robert Rosenblum and H. W. Janson, Nineteenth Century Art (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1994), p. 372, cite the convergence of paintings and plays in addressing domestic themes.

(19) The tradition of painting Europeans in Eastern dress dates to the eighteenth century. For the fancy dress artist receptions, see "Artistic Dress," Demorest's Monthly Magazine, vol. 18 (June 1882), p. 517.

(20) Cited in McLynn, Robert Louis Stevenson, p. 93.

(21) Cited in Booth and Mehew, Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, vol. 5, p. 1.

(22) Warren Adelson makes this parallel in Olson, Adelson, and Ormond, Sargent at Broadway, p. 41.

(23) This is pointed out by Simpson in Uncanny Spectacle, p. 124.

(24) Illustrated in Ormond and Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, pp. 66-67, No. 56.

(25) Illustrated ibid., p. 136, Fig. 64.

(26) Quoted ibid., p. 168, No. 162.

(27) Ibid., p. 169.

(28) Ibid., p. 179, No. 174.

Leslie Furth prepared this essay for publication before her death in the early summer of this year after a long illness. Her mentor at Boston University. Patricia Hills, reviewed the proofs before publication. Furth received her Ph.D. in 2003 from Boston University. Her dissertation is entitled "Imagining Transgression: Subverting the Victorian Norm in the Work of Thomas Satterwhite Noble. John Singer Sargent and John White Alexander." This essay is based on that dissertation, which benefited from the close reading and helpful comments of Bruce Robertson.