Having watched the film at the weekend, such was my sense of déjà vu as I opened the door to the exhibition that I felt I’d already seen it. I was almost weary of Sargent’s portraits (not my favourite genre) before I began – which is very unfair on such a brilliant painter. The exhibition’s focus was on how Sargent used fashion to present a sense of his sitters. As a thread tying together the exhibits, I found it quickly frayed: Charles Worth deserves a mention in “Unpicking Couture”, but here he’s an interloper. It’s the rendering in paint of the chosen fabric and the drape and the colour that matter – not what one wore to the opera.
So why did I come? Basically to see Dr Pozzi. Over Christmas I’d listened on the radio to Julian Barnes reading his book, “The Man in the Red Coat”, about the fascinating life of Samuel Pozzi. Since the painting is normally in Los Angeles, this was my chance to see it.
What did I learn/notice?
- Fittingly the last few galleries before the exhibition contained several 17th- and 18th-century full-length, life-size portraits – a good lead-in to Sargent.
- Sargent’s use of neutral colours – often together, like a black dress against a black background. He did this even with colour: Dr Pozzi’s startling red robe is on a dark red background.
- Sargent admired Hals and Velasquez for their subtle use of monochrome and emulated it in many of his portraits. You could see the influence of Gainsborough and Reynolds too, but Sargent’s portraits were much livelier.
- I was reminded of yesterday’s exhibition and how Leiter would often admit only one colour into his largely monochrome compositions; it’s what artists do. (Often red.)
- It quickly became hard for me to differentiate portrait after portrait: they became generic and – even worse – started to look like book covers for romantic novels.
- “Mrs Carl Meyer and her Children” with its Boucher-style opulence quite brought out the Bolshevik in me.
- By the time I reached the room of portraits of professional performers (Ellen Terry, La Carmencita) I felt as if I had already seen enough performers – the Wertheimer family in particular.
- Of course there were some wonderful paintings – but they didn’t fit the fashion template. A portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife, Fanny, was intriguing – as much for the depiction of the marriage as the man.
- When not painting to commission, Sargent was, to my mind, much more interesting. There was a cashmere shawl that popped up in three paintings: one a slightly Burne-Jones procession, one a Whistler-type lounger and another a dreamy abstract pile-up of colour and fabric.
- For a painter so at home with black, he was also brilliant with light and colour. I do so like “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose”, and here there were also a couple of quick sketches of the girls’ heads.
After lunch I headed to the Wallace Collection to see something of Sargent’s inspiration. Hals’s “Laughing Cavalier” is still out on tour, but Velasquez’s “Lady with a Fan” is there: black on grey with a hint of red.
Old Shoe Box 