The natural response to this fabulous exhibition at Tate Britain is envy and covetousness. Envy at the glorious creatures John Singer Sargent painted, immortal in lovely frocks. Covetousness, as you consider those gorgeous clothes, with some of the originals, or similar, on display nearby.
The most striking is Ellen Terry’s beetle cloak for Lady Macbeth, next to the picture of that extraordinary thesp, raising the crown above her head and looking manic.
Look, I know it’s London Fashion Week but there is no way that anything on the catwalk now comes even close to the fabulousness of these costumes. Just look at the Duchess of Portland in a gleaming ivory satin dress with a rose red velvet cloak which looks as soft as it must have felt: Sargent was a master of surface textures.
But then his exemplars were Frans Hals and Velasquez. And that’s also why he was so brilliant with black. The best example of that was his masterpiece, Madame X, viz, Madam Pierre Gautreau, in a devastatingly simple black velvet bodice that sets off the ivory whiteness of her bosom and bare arms: you can see why it was infamous (its sexiness nearly destroyed her reputation) and unforgettable.
The obvious point here is that clothes are an extension of ourselves, and these sitters are all the more alive by virtue of their clothes. Fashion here is not superficial. It is a projection of the character that the artist wanted to show.
And each picture is a production: Sargent often bossed his sitters into a particular colour or shape because it’s how he wanted to paint them. He sometimes brought friends into the studio, to keep the sitters happy, or played the piano, to perk them up. But the portrait was his show.
Sargent was cosmopolitan – his parents were American and he spent years in Paris; his version of English society was that of a shrewd outsider. He painted lanky, beaky aristos like Lord Ribblesdale in his ratcatcher’s costume – and what a depiction of a class that is – but another characterful portrait was the elderly Jane Evans, matron at Eton.
Another was his old friend, the writer Vernon Lee, animated behind her specs. His take on W. Graham Robertson tells you everything; Wilde’s friend looks absurdly young in his long black coat, but what a good touch the jade handled cane is, and the giant poodle at his feet with her pink ribbon.
Perhaps the most magnificent portrait is Dr. Pozzi at home – on the face of it a man in a dressing gown – but that scarlet gown is tremendous. The most touching is a little girl, all in white, gazing introspectively at massy hydrangeas.
The portraits are only one facet of Sargent: he could turn his hand to landscape and painted important murals. He was a friend of Monet and at the end of the show there are some dazzling outdoor scenes, visions of fleeting colour and light like the Black Brook or The Chess Game, that demonstrate that he could do the Impressionist thing as well as anyone. But the frocks. The frocks!
What a sumptuous treat this show is.
