In John Singer Sargent’s Portraits, Fashion Takes Center Stage

Sensual salmon-pink walls greet visitors in the first gallery of Fashioned by Sargent, the current exhibition at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston that pairs over 50 works by the much-loved American portrait painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) with actual garments worn by the elegant subjects in his paintings.

The color is a fitting backdrop for a single work, a full-length, standing portrait of Lady Sassoon (1907) displayed here alongside the flowing black taffeta opera cape she wore in the painting.

“We put great effort in researching the exact pink tone Sargent used in painting the lining of Lady Sassoon’s opera cape," said Erica E. Hirshler, the exhibition organizer and MFA Boston’s Senior Curator of American Paintings, in an animated conversation with Art & Object. "The color we picked is called ‘Glamour Pink’. We intended to play with the dramatic aspect of Sargent’s work throughout the exhibition.”

It is the inherent theatricality in Sargent’s approach to dressing and posing his subjects that infuses the exhibition with a heightened sense of drama and adds to the pure pleasure that viewing these masterworks of painterly bravura invokes. Sargent was the most successful portrait painter of his generation. Known for his exquisite ability to render the elegant soft fuzz of velvet or the sheen of satin in the luxuriant folds of a well-dressed Edwardian lady’s gown, Sargent used fashion not only to demonstrate his painterly skill but as a powerful tool to depict identity and personality. He regularly chose the outfits of his subjects or manipulated their clothing. This innovative use of costume was central to his artwork.

MFA Boston had begun to conceptualize this exhibition in 2016 long before COVID struck. “Our interpretive strategy was affected by audience input,” Hirshler elaborates. “In 2018, we invited museum goers’ participation via our Exhibition Lab: Sargent and Fashion. We gave people the opportunity to look behind the scenes to see how exhibitions are created…. We asked the public what type of manikin they preferred. [to display the garments]…. In offering five different approaches to labeling we discovered the audience was eager for more story, so the labels are longer. They wanted to know three things: 1. The identity of the sitter, 2. The significance of the clothing, and 3. The relationship of the sitter to the artist. More than just giving facts, my goal was to inspire people to look.”

Critics of Sargent have long accused him of being the servant to his mostly wealthy patrons. Hirshler, who is known as a Sargent scholar, was surprised to learn this was not the case. “I became aware how in control he was. His sitters repeatedly said that ‘Sargent told me what to wear,’” she said. In some cases, he used his imagination. MFA Boston conservator Lydia Vaghts described his preparation for the Portrait of Lady Helen Vincent (1904): “This is really an invented garment," said Vaghts. "It was originally white, and Sargent completely repainted it.” Known as a great English beauty, Lady Vincent wore a flowing white dress to pose on the balcony of her apartment in Venice. Sargent painted her wearing that white dress but was dissatisfied, and scraping off the white paint, he proceeded to paint her in black which contrasted with her swan-like neck and pearly white skin. He then wrapped her in a pink satin swath of fabric that may never have existed. While many of the works come from the MFA’s own extensive collection of Sargent, this painting is on a rare loan from the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Although white did not suit the Portrait of Lady Helen Vincent, Sargent frequently chose to paint his sitters wearing white. He was influenced by the advances in color theory and optics being explored in Europe at the end of the 19th century. He used a rainbow of color, delicate tints of pinks and blues to paint the shadows and light of intricate folds and pleats in his sitters white clothing. The beautiful Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (Gertrude Vernon), (1892) was often ill and was reportedly recovering from influenza when Sargent painted her. She reclines against a flower-patterned armchair in her London home. The white organza sleeves and ruffled bodice of her gown give a floating, ethereal sensation to the portrait. Her slim waist is wrapped in a lilac taffeta sash. But her dark eyes, gazing directly at the viewer, are riveting. She mesmerizes us with her determined look, in contrast to what we know of her precarious health.

Sargent also painted families, children, and men with equal attention to dress. The full length, red robed figure Dr. Pozzi at Home (1881) is a tour de force of red against red. The esteemed Parisian doctor was a specialist in gynecology. This unconventional portrait accentuates his striking male beauty that stands in sharp contrast to the more staid, conventional portraits like the spare seated figure of aging John D. Rockefeller.

The elegant standing full-length portrait known as Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau [Virginie Amélie Avegno], 1883–84), is perhaps Sergeant’s most well-known image. He considered it one of his best. The black gown with the plunging neckline worn by Madame Gautreau was intended to show off her figure and she considered the result a masterpiece. However, when it was displayed at the Paris Salon in 1884 in its original state with one diamond strap falling from her shoulder, the painting was ridiculed, called out as a vulgar attempt to garner attention. Sargent repainted the strap in its proper place, on her shoulder, in response to the uproar.

Fashioned by Sargent, which runs through January 15, 2024, is so rich in storytelling it immerses the viewer in a time and place that recreates the world in which the artist lived and worked in a way that few other exhibitions have ever attempted. In one of the exhibits labels describing the importance of dress in Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence, set in the 1870s, Archer Newland reflects on his wife’s wardrobe: “He was struck again by the religious reverence of even the most unworldly American women for the social advantages of dress. ‘It’s their armor,’ he thought, ‘their defense against the unknown, and their defiance of it.’” Sargent captured that defiance in every stroke.