Sargent, John Singer

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925, age 69). An American expatriate artist, born in Florence and died in London. Considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation” for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings.

Sargent was most likely gay, although in that time and place sexuality was unannounced. A life-long bachelor with a wide circle of friends, including Oscar Wilde. Biographers once portrayed him as staid and reticent. However, recent scholarship has theorized he was a private, complex and passionate man whose homosexual identity was integral to shaping his art.

This view is based on statements by his friends and associates, the general alluring remoteness of his portraits, the way his works challenge 19th-century notions of gender difference, his previously ignored male nudes, and some male portraits, including those of Thomas E. McKeller, Bartholomy Maganosco, Olimpio Fusco, and that of aristocratic artist and probable partner Albert de Belleroche, which hung in his Chelsea dining room.

Sargent had a long friendship with Belleroche, whom he met in 1882 and traveled with frequently. It has been suggested that Sargent’s reputation in the 1890s as “the painter of the Jews” may have been due to his empathy with and complicit enjoyment of their mutual social foreignness.

One such Jewish client, Betty Wertheimer, wrote that when in Venice, Sargent “was only interested in the Venetian gondoliers.” The painter Jacques-Émile Blanche, who was one of his early sitters, said after Sargent’s death that his sex life “was notorious in Paris, and in Venice, positively scandalous. He was a frenzied bugger.”

He had many relationships with women as well. It has been suggested that those with his sitters Rosina Ferrara, Virginie Gautreau, and Judith Gautier may have tipped into infatuation. As a young man, Sargent also for a time courted Louise Burkhardt, the model for Lady with the Rose.

Sargent’s friends and supporters included Henry James and Isabella Stewart Gardner, of both of whom he painted portraits, and Gardner also commissioned and purchased works from Sargent and sought his advice on other acquisitions. Edward VII and Paul César Helleu were also friends and supporters of Sargent. His associations also included Prince Edmond de Polignac and Count Robert de Montesquieu.

Other artists Sargent associated with were Dennis Miller Bunker, James Carroll Beckwith, Edwin Austin Abbey, and John Elliott (who also worked on the Boston Public Library murals), Francis David Millet, Joaquín Sorolla, and Claude Monet, whom Sargent portrayed with Monet’s wife “by the edge of a wood.”

Between 1905 and 1914, Sargent‘s frequent traveling companions were the married artist couple Wilfrid de Glehn and Jane Emmet de Glehn. The trio would often spend summers in France, Spain, or Italy, and all three would depict one another in their paintings during their travels.

See: John Singer Sargent’s “Thomas McKeller” (July 17, 2023)