Douard and Marie-Louise Pailleron, John Singer Sargent, 1881
As it is with the world of fashion, the popularity of certain styles of art will art wax and wane along with the times. Sometimes, appreciation comes only after the artist's death, as in the case of Vincent Van Gogh.
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By comparison, John Singer Sargent’s art was wildly popular while he lived. The son of American parents who travelled all over in Europe and never went home again, Sargent trained as an artist in France where he painted the scandalous Madame X– after which he left Paris to settle in London, gaining admiration, wealth and success for his elegant society portraits.
But after his death in 1925, the value of his work plummeted, viewed as old fashioned and frivolous, very much of a certain age and time. The influential critic, Roger Fry, went so far as to say that Sargent's work was completely irrelevant to 20th century Modernism. Perhaps he was thinking of the style of work shown in The Fountain below, which is somewhat indicative of the privileged nature of the rich in the so-called Edwardian summer, which led on to the harsh reality and horrors of the First World War.
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The Fountain, John Singer Sargent, 1907
So, by the 1960’s when Richard Ormond (Sargent’s sister’s grandson) began to collate and exhibit some of the artist’s work, his friends assumed that he was mad - until now when the National Portrait Gallery are to host a major exhibition in the spring of 2015 – after which the collection will move on to the Metropolitan in New York.
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Portrait of R L Stevenson by John Singer Sargent, with the writer's wife sitting on the sofa to the right of the frame
Sandy Nairne, the director of the National Portrait Gallery says that: “Extraordinary and rare loans are coming together for the first time to demonstrate Sargent’s talent in a new way.” In essence, this exhibition will expose the looser intimacy to be found in the work concentrating on Sargent's family and friends, as well as fellow Americans abroad. There will be fascinating personal depictions of fellow artists, actors and writers – though R L Stevenson was said to have called one of his portraits ‘damn queer’, and the VV has no idea at all of what Ellen Terry might have made of the portrait in which she posed as if still playing the part of Lady Macbeth, when she wore her magnificent beetle gown.
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, by John Singer Sargent
The VV adores them both - such striking, powerful images. She will certainly be hurrying to see this exhibition which will open at The National Portrait Gallery on February 12, and run until May 2015.