Interpreting Sargent

by Elizabeth Prettejohn

-- Published to accompany a major 1999 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston -- Sargent's first major retrospective since the memorial exhibitions held after his death in 1925.
-- Over 40 full-color and black-and- white illustrations celebrate the artist's sublime portraits as well as his lesser known landscapes, figure subjects, watercolors, and murals.
-- Dr. Elizabeth Prettejohn, author of STC's Rossetti and his Circle, provides a concise narrative examining Sargent's early education in France and the impact of his portraiture style on two continents, including a comparison of his celebrity status in life with the diminished reputation following his death, and the revival now underway.

Genres: Art, Art History, American, Nonfiction

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 1998

Reviews

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Singer Sargent's portraits have always appealed to me although I had not thought much about them, what their appeal was, into what "school" Sargent could be classified, whether he is still highly regarded by the art world today.

Elizabeth Prettejohn's Interpreting Sargent, which was published in conjunction with the Sargent exhibit at the National Gallery in 2000, discusses all this and more, providing us with a fairly objective modern look at a painter whose reputation had apparently been declining for decades before this show. I saw that retrospective and I'm not sure why I didn't pick up this book as it's reasonable in price and filled with insightful observations about Sargent's French, English, and American portraits and how they differ.

When he was in his prime, around 1900, to be painted by Sargent was an expensive proposition. A single, full-length portrait cost more than the equivalent of $100,000 today. It was trendy at that time to have paintings of three sisters or a mother and two children and these of course would cost rather more. Asher Wertheimer, whose portrait Singer painted in 1898, was so pleased with that work that he commissioned 10 or 11 more paintings from Singer. Wertheimer gave all of them to the nation (England)when he died.

Pettejohn tells us almost all of them have been in storage all these years. Singer's reputation was savaged by art critics after his death and although the National Gallery did exhibit the portraits together for a short time, they then disappeared for many decades. I find that unfortunate as the Wertheimer portrait and the one of his daughters, Ena and Betty are among my favorites and seem to me to exhibit the "psychological depth" Sargent was criticized as lacking.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prettejohn examines the criticisms of Sargent and finds them wanting. Where some saw a portraitist of the aristocracy, celebrating the status quo, she sees paintings reflecting the upper classes in social flux. Where some critics saw a brilliant technical painter whose portraits failed to achieve aesthetic or formalist mastery and whose subjects seemed devoid of inner life or psychological profundity, she finds works which powerfully project the sitter's social self (in the sense of Georg Simmel) and crystallize a single moment in the subject's stream of consciousness (in the sense of William James).

I was surprised that Sargent needed defending (he doesn't anymore; his critics were largely in the first half of the 20th century), but glad to read Prettejohn's eloquent "reinterpretation" of his career and examine the handsome color plates.

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prettejohn’s writing is always a pleasure to read because of her capacity to deduce, convey and push forward through old staid art historical reasoning. As the introduction’s subtitle ‘On the Brink of Modernity’ suggests, Prettejohn presents and considers ‘the splendour and aplomb of Sargent’s painting technique’ as one which has blinded critics in the past. This book is a suggestion that we should not permit Sargent’s ‘technical facility to dictate facile interpretations of his painting’ but rather we should embrace his technical mastery and consider re-engaging with his portraits as a record of the upper class in transition. We should also acknowledge his capacity and vision for moving from open-air naturalism through Orientalism to Whistlerian suggestiveness…with no sense of his ever changing gear.

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