by This is a terrible exhibition. The American painter John Singer Sargent is a major artist of identity, interested in the nature of social man. He paints people not as individuals but as players in a social world in a way that is frightening, modern and so truthful it hurts. Trained in Paris in the 19th century, he brought the colored brushwork of Manet and Monet to depict late Victorian and Edwardian British society, and was particularly drawn to those who did not conform to the old order – like the young Jewish women cheerfully proclaiming their individuality. Ena and Betty, Daughters of Asher and Mrs. Wertheimer. But above all, was he a fashion painter, as this show claims? Either way – what on earth are they talking about?
This bold artist of the modern world is turned into a shirt stuffed with a show that puts the dress before the person, the hat before the head and the crinoline before the soul in an obsessive, myopic argument. A painter who has much to say here, becomes an irrelevant relic.
The first thing you see when you walk in is an old opera house, wonderfully preserved and beautiful in its day. But this lacy black artefact can be found next to the first picture, Sargent’s portrait of Aline de Rothschild, Lady Sassoon, whose face is full of life and intelligence. That’s the difference between a work of art and an antique frock: the painting is as old as the dress but it’s lived in.
Throughout this show, Sargent’s scintillating works are pitifully on display. There are clothes in glass cases everywhere that block sight lines, distracting from the art instead of illuminating it. One particularly humorous example is his portrait of Lord Ribblesdale, a positively Sadistic image of a gentleman in a top hat, black coat and riding-toed boots that he could use on a horse or a housewife. Instead of letting this interesting portrait speak for itself, it is displayed next to a case containing a top hat, made by Cooksey and Co of London in the late 19th century, as the pedantic label explains.
The curators are struggling to get this topper on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, but I don’t know what its presence adds to our appreciation of Sargent. The clothing worn by his sitters seems to be biased towards recreating their skulls and showing them in their entirety with forensic reconstructions of their faces to see how accurately he painted them. The crinkled silks look so macabre to me. They belong to an attic with a rocking horse that moves of its own accord.
The canvases are not only crammed with old clothes but described with intrusive labeling and subtly placed against ever-changing wall colors and lighting.
The meticulous sartorial scholarship is lost. Painting is fiction, not a combination of facts, and no artist knew that better than Sargent. Born to American parents living in Europe, he was cosmopolitan, ironic and sophisticated – like a character in a Henry James novel. James, in fact, became a friend, and there are subtle connections between their artistry. Both could be wrong, with an idiot, for conservatives. But James explores the immense complexity of the human psyche and the nature of morality with resounding, yet heartbreaking power. Sargent is also a portraitist with subtlety and mystery, bringing out the “character” of his family – with inverted commas as James might have put it – in dishes and colors of impressionistic brushwork. Sargent and James would make a much better exhibition.
Instead, “Fashion was central to John Singer Sargent’s achievements as a portraitist”, says the front wall text. He was not. There is a painting. The way he paints is what makes his art breathe. But here it is hard to see that. The canvases are not only crammed with old clothes but are described with assertive labeling and subtly placed against ever-changing wall colors and lighting. Worst of all, there is no narrative logic. The exhibition gives a sense of Sargent’s life as an artist for his essays.
This is all the more tragicomic because so much of Sargent’s best work has been borrowed. If I were in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I would have a serious complaint about the way their treasure, Madame X, is displayed. This portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau in an off-the-shoulder dress was bold for the 1880s, even in Paris, where the contrast between the dark material and the slightly bluish-white flesh shocked the Salon exhibition of 1884. But far from being given the prominence it deserves, it is shown under a forgotten quote painted in large letters.
Worse, it’s just dropped in with no buildup or history (other than fashion history). We learn nothing about the Paris where Sargent began his career: the capital of the avant garde where Manet and the impressionists were locked in an artistic civil war with the conservative Salon. Sargent knew the modernist rebels, he met Monet as early as 1876 and his later portrait of the impressionist at his easel shows how attracted he was to such ideas. Madame X brings that knowledge into the establishment Salon and plays on the border of respect and anger.
Related: As John Singer Sargent made a scene
Sargent made a bit of a miscalculation, and people were more upset than he expected. Is it the black dress that surprised the Salon? No, it was sex. Gautreau, not the frock, is the star, projecting a sophisticated, self-consciously self-possessed glamor as she turns her sharp profile. It is a novel compressed into a portrait. Sargent encourages us to wonder who this amazing character is, where she’s been and where she’s going. Gautreau collaborates with him to create the fiction, inciting the fantasies.
This portrait of a woman shows how Sargent is as elusive and complex a fabulist as his alter ego, James. All the paintings in this exhibition are equally rich, but the curators hammer home their subtle clothing-based interpretation. It is extremely difficult to see that in the chaotic non-narrative display. An artist as good as Sargent needs space, good light and not much else – certainly not quotes and props.
If you love historical fiction, this might be for you. If you love great art, stay home and read Portrait of a Lady.
• Sargent and Fashion is at Tate Britain, London, from 22 February to 7 July
