Sargent The Paris Years (1874-1884)

In The Luxembourg Gardens, 1879,
© Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art
No monographic exhibition has previously been devoted to John Singer Sargent in France. Yet it was in France that the young painter received his training, developing his style and network of artists. It was there that he also enjoyed his first successes and created a number of his masterpieces, including Dr Pozzi at HomeHome (1881, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles) and The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Designed in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the exhibition "Sargent. The Paris Years" aims to introduce the painter to a wide audience. The exhibition brings together over 90 of John Singer Sargent’s works, including some that have never been exhibited in France. It traces the meteoric rise of the young artist, who arrived in Paris in 1874, when he was eighteen years old, to study with Carolus-Duran. The exhibition covers his career up to the mid-1880s, when he moved to London after the scandal caused by his portrait of Madame Gautreau (Madame X) at the Salon.
During that decade, Sargent forged his style and personality alike in the crucible of Paris’ head-spinning art scene, marked by the proliferation of exhibitions, development of naturalism and impressionism, and Paris’ ascendancy as art capital of the world. The young American painter found no lack of support there from other expatriates and also made himself at home in French society, forging ties with a circle of artists, writers and enlightened patrons. The many effigies that Sargent has left us of these personages paint a fascinating portrait of a highly cosmopolitan, rapidly changing society in which the old European aristocracy rubbed shoulders with the new world’s moneyed youth. Always in search of fresh inspiration, Sargent spent little time depicting “Parisian life”, but took advantage of his base in the French capital to make frequent journeys around Europe and in North Africa. He brought back numerous paintings from them, landscapes and genre scenes that combine exoticism, mystery and sensuality. But it was in the field of portraiture that Sargent established himself as the most talented artist of his day, surpassing his masters and equaling the great artists of the past. His extraordinary technical skill, the vivacity of his touch, iridescence of his colours and provocative assurance of his compositions unsettled the public and impressed the critics, who saw him as the worthy successor to Velázquez. In 1883, commenting on one of his most original paintings, the Portrait of the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, the American writer Henry James, friend of Sargent, noted that the artist “offers the slightly ‘uncanny’ spectacle of a talent which on the very threshold of its career has nothing more to learn.”
In 1884, the portrait of Virginie Gautreau, which Sargent would later describe as “the best thing he had ever done”, nonetheless aroused hostile reactions at the Salon. They were aimed in particular at its model’s morality and testified to the worldly and social issues at play in the art of the “public” portrait in France in the late 19th century. A special section of the exhibition is devoted to that episode in Sargent’s career and to the painting in question, on exceptional loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and on view in Paris for the first time since 1884. Based on extensive research, “Sargent. The Paris Years” also takes stock of the lasting ties the artist retained with the city he was trained in, even after his move to London. His engagement in favour of Manet’s Olympia, the work of an artist he admired, being added to the national collections in 1890 bears witness to it. It was also in France that Sargent enjoyed a first form of institutional recognition, as the State purchased his Portrait of the Dancer Carmencita for the Luxembourg Museum in 1892
- Monday Closed
- Tuesday 9.30am - 6.00pm
- Wednesday 9.30am - 6.00pm
- Thursday 9.30am - 9.45pm
- Friday 9.30am - 6.00pm
- Saturday 9.30am - 6.00pm
- Sunday 9.30am - 6.00pm
- Time slot full rate
- €16
- Time slot reduced rate
- €13
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Enfant & Cie
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€13
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Nocturne rate
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€12
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-18 year olds, -26 year old residents of the EEA
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Free
Exhibition artworks

In The Luxembourg Gardens, 1879,
© Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art