Toying with Tradition: Sargent and Fashion at the Tate

OVERDUE Writer Eloise Hallo

It is not typ­i­cal for a male artist of 19th cen­tu­ry esteem to show so strong a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with female fash­ion as to gar­ner an entire exhi­bi­tion adjoin­ing the two. John Singer Sargent’s place in time cham­pi­oned men’s issues as wor­thy top­ics of con­ver­sa­tion and art — in a con­ve­nient­ly male-led pub­lic — and women’s issues, like fash­ion or the pesky dis­cus­sion of equal rights, as belong­ing only to the inter­ests of oth­er women, or null and void. Sar­gent, atyp­i­cal in this respect, need­ed to find new ways to medi­ate these cracks, which had oth­er­wise lent them­selves to one-note depic­tions of female sit­ters: sit­ters who were paint­ed smil­ing­ly feath­er-dust­ing at home, as, to be quite frank, artists and audi­ences alike had lit­tle inter­est in, or knowl­edge of, nar­ra­tives to oth­er descrip­tion. And so, in the late 1800’s, Sar­gent and his paint­brush of eman­ci­pa­tion brought women, their fash­ion­ing, and, in so doing, notions of iden­ti­ty, to the fore­ground of high art and high soci­ety — to pre­dictable resis­tance. Sargent’s post as a com­mis­sioned artist to this very soci­ety com­pli­cat­ed his will to cre­ate out­side of con­ven­tion. As such, his oeu­vre exists in two capac­i­ties: one, paid for and in align­ment with the com­forts of gen­dered roles, and anoth­er, mod­ern and uncom­fort­able, chron­i­cling an artis­tic mind and the world of tra­di­tion it was at odds with.

The exhibition’s fore­most exhib­it is titled ‘Women in Black’ and, shock­ing­ly, it delves into Sargent’s propen­si­ty to style his sub­jects in such tones. Innocu­ous as it may seem now, ‘women in black’ rep­re­sent­ed one prin­ci­pal sta­tus in his era — beyond class or social stature — to wear black meant to be mourn­ing, more often than not a loss, typ­i­cal­ly, of the man that foot­not­ed your iden­ti­ty. Yet, Mrs. John Jay Chap­man, below, grieves no such tur­moil. After her moth­er died, as a young girl, she was to raise her sev­en broth­ers and sis­ters, and it is in this strength Sar­gent found her to be an apt sit­ter. He dress­es her in black not, as the Vic­to­ri­an era would have it be, because some soli­tary moment of loss changes her image in the pub­lic eye, but because her life, as a woman, has been endur­ing­ly hard, and she mourns the free­dom of it being oth­er­wise. As the Tate cura­tors note, our autere’s abil­i­ty to play with socialised struc­tures such as these allowed his paint­ings dual­i­ty: both mod­ern and in line with tra­di­tion, they appeased the very high soci­ety they critiqued.

Mrs. John Jay Chap­man, 1893

Sar­gent was, how­ev­er, not always so tact­ful in this, and he would soon learn the impor­tance of strik­ing a bal­ance between paint­ing for his mod­ern sit­ters and for the tra­di­tion­al­ist audi­ence that paid his bills. His por­trait of Vir­ginie Gautreau or ‘Madame X’, as we remem­ber her now, remains the famed emblem of these odds. She was a muse well-known in artis­tic cir­cles for her bold per­son­al demeanour and style, two prais­es Sar­gent intend­ed to cap­ture in her imag­ing which ini­tial­ly — scan­dalous­ly — saw one of her dress straps falling down. Its debut at the Salon of 1884 proved cat­a­stroph­ic; audi­ences denounced the work’s ‘inde­cen­cy’, and the young artist was forced to re-work the piece and coy­ly paint a strap where none had been — a les­son, it seemed, in fly­ing before he could walk. Over thir­ty years lat­er, when the piece was sold to the MET, Sar­gent would uncon­vinc­ing­ly aver, ‘I sup­pose it is the best thing I have done’.

Sar­gent was learn­ing that strin­gent ideas sur­round­ing fem­i­nin­i­ty, mas­culin­i­ty, and the roles of both pur­veyed the soci­ety in which he worked, and he was begin­ning to realise these strong­holds would exact influ­ence over what his paint­ings — should he hope for remuneration

— were allowed to con­vey. This is no bet­ter seen than in his por­trait of Hen­ry Lee Hig­gin­son, which bran­dish­es its sit­ter with notions of sto­icism one might expect from a com­mis­sioned piece. Sar­gent employs old mas­ter­ly tech­nique to fore­front Higginson’s bat­tle-scar and the Civ­il War cav­al­ry cloak that lies across his lap — yuck! — afford­ing his sit­ter the dic­ta­to­r­i­al air he paid good mon­ey for.

Left: Hen­ry Lee Hig­gin­son, 1903
Right: W. Gra­ham Robert­son, 1894

How­ev­er, as the Tate draws our atten­tion to, in more per­son­al works, Sar­gent main­tained artis­tic truth to his sub­jects and was drawn to those who sub­vert­ed such gen­dered con­ven­tions. His boy-like por­tray­al of W. Gra­ham Robert­son is entire­ly oppo­site in its sug­ges­tion about what makes mas­culin­i­ty art­ful. Through the con­fines of his muz­zling, Sar­gent utilised his per­son­al works to con­demn the cen­sor­ship of those he was paid to paint and to crit­i­cise the social struc­tures that made it pos­si­ble. Robertson’s fairy-like appear­ance and demure avert­ed gaze bear more sim­i­lar­i­ty with female por­trai­ture of the era, and Sargent’s choice to enter its plea as valid art is but one of the ways he toyed with tradition.

Much of his attack had to do with re-con­tex­tu­al­is­ing old meth­ods, which is what we see in his 1889 work of Flo­ra Priest­ley. Sar­gent enacts his wealthed knowl­edge of fash­ion and colour to fore­ground Priestley’s face. Though the piece itself doesn’t invent any dis­cernible tech­nique, his will to sit­u­ate her as both the sub­ject and object of the paint­ing affords Priest­ly more auton­o­my in the work than oth­er artists of the era con­sid­ered to be art­ful, much less prac­tice. The same is true of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, who stares direct­ly, and intent­ly, at her painter: madam, rather than muse. In both, Sar­gent with­holds our abil­i­ty to view either woman as pas­sive; in so doing, he under­mines the artis­tic tenets that would have soon­er seen female sit­ters con­strained to this space.

Left: Flo­ra Priest­ley, 1889
Right: Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892

But Sar­gent, ahead of his time as ever, under­stood the two-way street of tra­di­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in think­ing about gen­der. His por­trait Dr Pozzi at Home is per­haps the key exam­ple in how re- con­tex­tu­al­is­ing his sit­ters forced audi­ences into the mul­ti­tudes of their iden­ti­ty, remov­ing them from the stag­nan­cy of a paint­ed set­ting. Samuel Pozzi, a well-estab­lished doc­tor to the upper class­es, is seen in Sargent’s work — not to be labour­ing over a pal­lid Vic­to­ri­an child or chuff­ing smoke amidst a cir­cle of round-bel­lied col­leagues — but (fab­u­lous­ly) half-dressed and at home. Pozzi’s depic­tion, in the inti­ma­cy of his domestic

sphere, removes him from the easy-pick­ings of his doc­tor­ate and mas­culin­i­ty, and, quite unlike Hig­gin­son, we are invit­ed into the more per­son­al, vul­ner­a­ble sides to his iden­ti­ty. There is, of course, the added fact that domes­tic spaces were tra­di­tion­al­ly female, and Sargent’s plac­ing of Pozzi proves to be anoth­er of the ways he would employ his art to chal­lenge such norms.

A sim­i­lar gam­bit is at work in Non­chaloir (Repose), whose sit­ter, so too, is por­trayed at home yet, as its title alludes to, reposed, reclined — two things women at home were sel­dom allowed to be. Sargent’s works that took focus on the domes­tic space were inter­est­ed in the parts of peo­ple not com­mon­ly seen, and his choice to manoeu­vre these intri­ca­cies into art of high soci­ety in so pub­lic a way chal­lenged the con­ven­tions that had been hap­pi­ly affirmed in the canon for centuries.

Dr Pozzi at Home, 1881

Non­chaloir (Repose), 1911

In many ways, the truth to John Singer Sargent’s artis­tic inten­tion was, for a long time, bemused, or per­haps half-bemused, by the cod­dled upper class­es he worked for. Their belief that there exist­ed a right and wrong to cre­ative prac­tice com­pli­cat­ed Sargent’s abil­i­ty to paint freely or to sug­gest such inflam­ma­to­ry sen­ti­ments as that a woman could look at her painter — imag­ine! His flit­ting between the two became evi­dence of con­tem­po­rane­ity and a world that was not ready for it — a ver­i­ta­ble dou­ble agent who paint­ed, styl­is­ti­cal­ly, in accor­dance with tra­di­tion but was, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly, mod­ern. Regard­less, if you go to learn or sim­ply to see its pret­ty dress­es out of archive for the first time in years, Sar­gent and Fash­ion at the Tate is not one to miss.