(♪ background music ♪)
"John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal"
sheds new light on an important
but often overlooked aspect of the artist's work.
I'm Robyn Asleson, Curator of Prints and Drawings
at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery
and I'd like to share with you
some of the highlights of the exhibition.
Sargent's international fame as a portraitist
brought him into the orbit of some of the most
influential men and women of his day.
In 1907, when Sargent renounced portrait painting
and began making charcoal drawings instead,
the range of his subjects expanded
to include a fascinating mixture of artists,
musicians,
actors,
writers,
and political figures.
Many of these people were what we would call
influencers today.
They were the trendsetters
who shaped contemporary taste,
shifted politics, and challenged social conventions.
Eugenia Errázuriz had a background
as cosmopolitan as Sargent's.
She was a native of Chile who met him
while living in Paris before moving on, like him,
to London and then to Biarritz.
Sargent greatly admired her as an authority
on art, literature, and music.
And his respect comes through in this drawing,
which also conveys an air of sumptuous luxury
and a bewitching sense of mystery.
The feathers and beads of the extraordinary hat
merge with the shimmering strands
of the woman's hair.
It is unclear whether the design
visible between the two strands of pearls,
which Sargent created by erasing charcoal
rather than adding it, is meant to represent a pattern
on her blouse or additional pieces of jewelry.
The vigorous strokes of charcoal in the background
envelope the portrait in a shadowy atmosphere.
Yet despite all of this, it is the confident face
at the center of the drawing that commands our attention.
The portrait exemplifies Sargent's gift
for representing strong women.
We sense an intelligent mind at work here.
Errázuriz is presented not as an object to be observed,
but as an observer.
She looks back at us, and with a slight tilt of her head
and an expression of mild amusement,
she seems to take our measure.
Sargent's portraits of literary figures
span the transition from the late Victorian era
to the modern 20th century.
The Irish poet, William Butler Yeats,
also bridged that gap.
Considered the last of the Romantics in his youth,
he probed psychology and politics in his later work.
Sargent was commissioned to make this drawing
as the frontispiece of a volume of Yeats's poems.
We all know not to judge a book by its cover,
but in this case the frontispiece may have helped
to sell the book.
By cloaking half of the poet's face in shadow,
Sargent drew attention
to his sensuous full lips,
strong jaw line, and tousled hair,
creating a beguilingly moody and enigmatic impression.
Yeats was highly self- conscious about his image,
invariably dressing in what he considered
a poet's costume: a floppy bow tie and velvet jacket.
Though he was 43 when Sargent drew him,
he appears much younger.
And judging from photographs,
he was never quite this fetching.
Needless to say Yeats was delighted
with the way Sargent portrayed him.
Music was Sargent's great pleasure,
and many of his charcoal portraits feature musicians,
composers, and patrons who shared his passion.
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney,
a modern art collector who founded
New York's Whitney Museum of American Art,
was also an important patron of modern music and dance.
It was probably at Whitney's request
that Sargent represented her in this unusual
full-length format, which allowed him
to show her striking a dancer's pose,
dressed in her favorite outfit
which had been created for her by Léon Bakst,
the designer for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
Sargent's versatile touch can be seen
in the contrast between the firm charcoal marks
that define Whitney's boldly patterned tunic,
and the feathery strokes that suggest
the filmy fabric of her pants.
With his instinctive knack for flattery,
Sargent emphasized Whitney's elegant movements
and slender form.
Anyone who sits for a portrait
is staging a performance to some degree,
but here Whitney presents herself
with a particularly self- conscious sense of drama.
Although Sargent spent most of his life in Europe,
Boston was his American home base.
While working on a series of murals there,
he made charcoal portraits of the city's
most notable residents.
In this drawing he represents Eleonora Randolph Sears,
a trailblazing athlete who was born into the elite
but refused to be limited by its conventions.
She excelled in at least 19 sports,
ranging from figure skating to boxing to football.
And she was also a long distance walker
who could hike from Newport, Rhode Island
to Boston in 16 hours and then change into a ballgown
for an evening party.
Sargent puts her self assurance and lack of pretense
on display in this drawing.
He shows her dressed in the simple blouse
and jacket that she wore for tennis, with no jewelry,
and her hair blown back as if by the wind.
She meets our eyes with a steady gaze
and just the slightest hint of a smile
twitching on her lips.
The early 20th century was a time of tremendous
social and political upheaval.
And Sargent, through his charcoal drawings,
documented many of the agents of change.
One of the most important, but least known today,
was Moorfield Storey, a prominent American
civil rights attorney who led the Anti-Imperialist League
from 1905 to 1921 and served as founding president
of the NAACP for two decades.
Storey was also an outspoken advocate
for Native American rights,
and he brought cases before the Supreme Court
concerning residential segregation,
voting rights, lynching, and mob intimidation.
A close look at this dignified portrayal of Storey
reveals the subtle dynamism that Sargent conveyed
through vigorous vertical strokes
of charcoal in the background,
contrasting with diagonal strokes in Storey's jacket,
and the bold highlights that glint off
Storey's forehead and hair.
Mindful of his firebrand reputation,
Storey once joked that this drawing
could be considered, as he put it,
"a fraud on the pubic since it represents such an amiable
old gentleman instead of a ferocious bruiser."
Sargent's insights into personality and psychology
and his ability to rapidly record his impressions
in charcoal, made him the ideal artist
to portray the women and men
at the forefront of a rapidly changing world.
Thank you for joining me for this highlights tour
of "John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal."
Richard Ormond was the exhibition's lead curator
and the Morgan Library and Museum were co-organizers
with the National Portrait Gallery,
on whose behalf I would like to thank the sponsors
whose generosity helped make this exhibition possible.