John Singer Sargent had a long and productive life as an artist, creating landscapes, still lifes, murals, sculptures, and every imaginable type of artwork. But his greatest achievement was surely his portraits. They are considered among the greatest in the history of art, and in The Janus Gate, I have tried to capture his thoughts about painting portraits. How much of a person’s inner being can be revealed with paint on canvas? The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit has made many people wonder. The two older girls—the painting can hardly be called a portrait of them at all, since they are barely visible in the shadows—later, much later, went insane. We have to ask: What did Sargent see in the faces of those girls that made him place them forever in the shadows?
Anyone interested in the real life of John Singer Sargent will find these sources informative.
Books:
Davis, Deborah. Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. New York: Jeremy R Tarcher/Penguin Group, 2003.
Although the events described in this book take place just after the period of The Janus Gate, this was the most useful book I found for a discussion of the period: the life of upper-class women, the obsession with scandal, clothing, and other things that novelists need to know something about that a biography or history might well overlook. Also the analysis of the elements that made the painting so shocking had some influence on my description of the entity Sargent and the girls create.
Fairbrother, Trevor. John Singer Sargent: The Sensualist. Seattle and New Haven: Seattle Art Museum/Yale University Press, 2000.
An analysis of how intensely felt the works of this quiet man really are.
Lubin, David M. Act of Portrayal: Eakins, Sargent and Jones. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
This has more information on The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit than the other books, blit has little to say about what Sargent may be trying to tell us about the girls. Instead, it takes an analytical look at the techniques he used to make this strange painting work.
Olson, Stanley. John Singer Sargent, His Portrait. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.
The biography gave me the basics of Sargent’s life, plus a lot of interesting details that didn’t make it into the book: He always wore a suit when he painted and never needed a smock; he ate with his watch in front of him so he wouldn’t linger over his food; he collected costumes and played the banjo.
Some websites:
This is a good website for an overview of Sargent’s best-known works. www.jssgallery.com
A vast resource of all things John Singer Sargent, with a lively community and frequent updates on the latest in Sargent news. It features sophisticated discussions of The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, along with all of Sargent’s other major works.
If you would like to see more of Sargent’s work, visit some of these museums and public buildings.
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, along with many other works by Sargent, hangs at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. The website is www.mfa.org. Also in Boston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is home to Sargent’s painting El Jaleo.
The lady in Fumee d’Amber Gris breathes the scented air at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Travel there, or see it at www.clarkart.edu.
Madame X still impresses visitors, though the strap of her dress, once slipping down her elegant shoulder, was repainted in a more decorous position after the first scandal. See her (and other works by Sargent) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, or on the website www.metmuseum.org. The Brooklyn Museum in New York is home to Paul Helleu Sketching.
The McKim Building of the Boston Public Library is home to Sargent’s mural cycle, The Triumph of Religion. Recently restored, the murals can now be seen at the library or on a wonderful website, www.sargentmurals.bpl.org. There are more murals at Harvard University’s Widener Library, but the library is not open to the public.
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose and other works can be seen at the Tate Gallery in London, England. Gassed hangs in London’s Imperial War Museum.
The Corcoran Gallery, the Freer Gallery, and the White House in Washington, D.C., hold works by Sargent; so do the Carnegie Gallery of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Armand Hammer Museum of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois. If you live near an art museum, call and ask if you can see works by Sargent there. John Singer Sargent created so much art during his lifetime that there is a good chance you’ll be able to see something that sprang from his hands long ago.