The Musée d'Orsay is presenting a compelling exhibition dedicated to John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), focusing specifically on the phenomenal portraitist's formative and triumphant years in Paris. This centennial exhibition, organized in co-production with New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, offers visitors an enticing glimpse into Sargent's Parisian production, though it deliberately avoids being a comprehensive retrospective.
Sargent garnered admiration from literary giants of his era, with Marcel Proust finding his work marvelous and Andy Warhol later envying his glamorous appeal. His compatriot, writer Henry James, who helped open doors to high society for the artist, saw in Sargent both a brother in psychological introspection and a companion in cosmopolitan refinement. These relationships flourished during the pivotal 1870s and 1880s, when American artistic taste was still being forged in Paris.
In 1874, while the first Impressionist exhibition was creating waves in Paris, an 18-year-old dandy born in Florence to bohemian Philadelphia bourgeois parents arrived in the city. Already skilled with his eye and hand, having copied Tintoretto's Wedding at Cana as early as 1872, young Sargent knocked on the studio door of Carolus-Duran, one of the most sought-after portraitists among French high society.
The current exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay, while co-produced with the Met (which already presented it to 500,000 visitors over three and a half months), is not a retrospective but rather a focused exploration of specific periods in the artist's career. The show features three masterpieces that exemplify Sargent's extraordinary talent: "Dr. Pozzi at Home," the portrait of dancer Carmen Dauset Moreno known as La Carmencita, and the iconic "Portrait of Madame X" (Virginie Gautreau, a wealthy American living in Paris).
This concentrated approach to Sargent's Parisian years - those of his artistic formation and his conquest of fame - creates an appetite for more comprehensive coverage of his work. The exhibition successfully demonstrates why this mondaine painter became such a celebrated figure, leaving visitors wondering when a true retrospective might grace museum walls. The carefully curated selection provides insight into how Sargent mastered the art of high-society portraiture while developing his distinctive style that would make him one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation.
