Sargent in Boston - John Singer Sargent, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

Magazine Antiques, June, 1999 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Not infrequently, large retrospectives of an important artist's work generate smaller related exhibitions. Such is the case with the traveling John Singer Sargent show now on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (see ANTIQUES, March 1999, p. 350). The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the same city has mounted a particularly interesting exhibition entitled Sargent: The Late Landscapes, which is on view until September 26. Sargent enjoyed Mrs. Gardner's patronage and friendship, and the museum she created at her death owns one of his late landscapes, which is complemented in the exhibition by thirteen additional oils and watercolors on loan from other institutions. The show and its catalogue are made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation.

By the 1890s Sargent was well established internationally as one of the leading portraitists of his day, and his financial future was secure. In 1907 he declared in a letter to Ariana Curtis, a longtime family friend: "I have vowed a vow not to do any more portraits...it is to me positive bliss to think that I shall soon be a free man." While he did not entirely adhere to his vow, he turned his attention from executing likenesses of the leading Brahmins of England and the United States to painting penetrating pure landscapes, which he had started to exhibit publicly in 1905. Additionally, he accepted three major mural commissions from the Boston Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Harvard University.

Sargent's late landscapes are characterized by a high (sometimes nonexistent) horizon line, usually appearing in the top third of the picture plane, broken brashwork, and nearly abstract compositions that are studies in light, pattern, and design. At this point in his career he frequently traveled to distant locales in search of material for his murals, which were figurative and filled with allegorical references. He went to the Near East, for example, in 1905-1906 in order to make sketches for his Boston Public Library commission. Sargent would usually head to the Alps in July or August, always accompanied by his unmarried sister Emily, and beginning in 1907, also with his other sister Violet. Many of the works in this exhibition are Alpine views. Sargent remained in the United States between 1916 and 1918, working primarily, but not exclusively, on his murals. In the summer of 1916, barred from the European Alps by World War I, he traveled instead to the Rocky Mountains and northwestern Canada in search of subjects, one of which, Yoho Falls (illustrated at left), was painted to fulfill a commission by Mrs. Gardner. Letters to her indicate that he camped near the falls, where he endured wet and cold nights - conditions that perhaps encouraged him to travel to Florida the following spring. He returned to London in April 1918, and save for a commission that necessitated traveling to the British front lines, much of the remainder of his life in the post-war era was devoted to completing his mural cycles. These were finally finished in 1925, the year he wrote, "Now the American things are done, and so, I suppose, I may die when I like," which he did in his sleep on April 14.

A catalogue of the exhibition contains essays by Hilliard T. Goldfarb, T J. Jackson Lears, and Erica E. Hirshler. It may be obtained from the Gardner Museum by telephoning 617-278-5122.

Among the other shows related to Sargent on view in the Boston region this summer is Sargent in the Studio: Drawings, Sketchbooks, and Oil Sketches, which opens at the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 10. It remains on view until September 26 and is comprised of more than seventy works drawn primarily from the Fogg's extensive holdings of more than four hundred drawings and thirty-three paintings by Sargent. These works were the gift of Sargent's sisters, Violet Ormond and Emily Sargent, who wanted some of the artist's works to go to a teaching institution.

Many of the drawings and oils are related to the murals Sargent painted toward the end of his life. In 1921 and 1922 he executed two monumental murals entitled Death and Victory and Coming of the Americans to Europe for Harvard's Widener Library. The preliminary studies for them included in this exhibition range from composition studies in pencil to finished charcoal drawings.

Sargent carried sketchbooks of various sizes in which he recorded things around him almost incessantly. He began sketching as a teenager while touring Europe and continued to do so throughout most of his career. Among the later works on view are portrait and architectural studies and even doodles and caricatures.

A fourth Sargent exhibition is on view between June 7 and July 30 at the Boston Public Library. It is entitled Sargent in Context at the Boston Public Library. Some of the works on view are related to Satgent's mural for the library entitled The Triumph of Religion. The exhibition also takes a look at the other artists who decorated or proposed decorations for this building, from Augustus and Louis Saint-Gaudens to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Edwin Austin Abbey The show is comprised of several dozen works, including drawings, watercolors, photographs, models, and documents.