Paintings Described in my Novel

In writing a novel about John Singer Sargent, naturally one must include references to many of his paintings, and in my book, there are more than a dozen that are described at length or referred to in passing. The "portraits" who tell the story are, of course, illustrated by the actual images Sargent painted of them, but I thought I would use this space to fill out the Gallery, so to speak, of the characters and persons that make up my novel. I hope you enjoy seeing them along with a quote from my novel for context (page references in parentheses) This is the first installment of probably four posts on this subject.

El Jaleo or The Gypsy Dancer (p. 34)

In front of the enormous painting--it was nearly eight feet high and eleven feet long--a middle-aged, somewhat portly man, with the air of a professor or lecturer, was pointing at the canvas with no little indignation. "Is this art?" he said. "These low types of men and women, sitting in the background against a dirty wall, their mouths open, heads flung back yowling with the degraded music that, no doubt, has sent this gypsy woman into contortions that no living woman could actually replicate!"


The Gondolier (p. 61-62)

Violet...approached another canvas, somewhat obscured by a scarf thrown at hazard across it, which she drew back. A young, mustachioed man gazed out with frank, dark eyes, his full lips sensual, the dark curls of his hair falling across his forehead from under a wide-brimmed hat. His brown coat had slipped off one shoulder slightly, revealing a strong, smooth neck and collarbone under a gauzy white collarless shirt.

Venetian Street Scene (p. 82-83)

[The painting] depicted a narrow alley with crumbling, exposed brick and plaster walls--what isn't crumbling, in Venice? I thought--the perspective sharply slanted as the two walls and the pavement raced to the very center of the far back of the painting, where a reach of hazy afternoon sunlight whitened a wall with windows and trellises overflowing with plants. A dark doorway was set into the right half of the alley wall, and a woman in a black, fringed shawl and a full, frilly, pinkish lavender skirt, stood nonchalant, one arm crooked with her hand on her hip, one foot resting on the doorstep, as if hesitating at the moment of entering.

Sargentology Conference was fantastic!

The first ever Sargentology Conference was held at the University of York, at King's Manor, (left) a centuries-old building that is used for conferences as well as for academic pursuits. Some forty attendees from universities and museums throughout Europe and North America gathered to share and discuss "new perspectives" of John Singer Sargent and his art. My talk on Sargent as a Fictional Character was part of the "Sargent and Literature" panel. There were other presentations and panels which explored his music, the way he painted, the materials available to him, and various other interesting aspects of his life and art. We all met for dinner at Gray's Court Inn (right) where we dined in style and with scintillating conversations. I'll write more soon about the presentations, but here for now are some photos of the wondrous, magical City of York.

 

Sargentology Conference in York, England

The University of York is hosting a "Sargentology" conference at the end of April -- and my paper on "John Singer Sargent as a Character in Historical Fiction" has been accepted! The conference will be held at the King's Manor conference center (seen here) which looks old and beautiful! 
I'm going to be on a panel with other presenters for the "Sargent and Literature" section, and I'll also be chairing a panel on "Sargent and the Zeitgeist". You can see more about the conference at www.sargentology.com.

My initial research has turned up several children's and YA stories or short novels featuring Sargent, some of which are really interesting. Of course I'll be talking about my own novel, and the new mystery series I've started with Sargent and his friend Violet Paget as the amateur sleuths. There was another mystery with Sargent in it written in 2002 titled "A Weekend at Blenheim" which portrays Sargent as a fairly racy, adulterous and randy sort who gets busy with Consuelo, the wife of the 9th Duke of Marlborough (Winston Churchill's uncle) in 1905. A very interesting short story by Allan Gurganus (author of The Last Living Confederate Widow) is included in his collection, The Practical Heart. It's intriguing and wonderful to see how writers depict this famous painter, who was, by all accounts, a very private person and hard to pin down in many areas of his life--so much room for imagination!

 
And of course I'm looking forward to a first-ever trip to the famous city of York, with its incredibly beautiful cathedral church, or York Minster.
 

Happy Birthday, John!

John Singer Sargent was born on this day 160 years ago, in Florence, Italy -- 12 January 1856. Over the course of the next 75 years until his death in 1925, he drew, sketched, coloured and painted some

900 oil paintings and 2,000 watercolours! He was a prodigious, fast and exceptionally skilled artistic genius, and over the last two decades or so, his star has been rising again -- thanks for the most part to his great-great-nephew Richard Ormond, who has been instrumental in providing the world with the Catalog Raisonne of Sargent's works. Ormond was also the leading light behind the magnificent exhibition "Sargent and His Friends" that recently showed at the NY Met Museum, and previous to that, in London at the National Gallery.

I have been in love with Sargent and his work since 1999, when I saw my first exhibition of his work at the Washington D.C. National Gallery.  It was there and then that I vowed I would write a novel about this artist, and in particular, his amazing "Portraits d'Enfants", also known as the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. 

Much later, I was to learn that my very favorite author, Henry James, was an intimate friend and patron of Sargent, and my literary sights were set -- my novel Portraits of an Artist -- has three scenes with Henry James in them! (N.B. Henry James died in 1916, so this year is a huge year for all sorts of Jamesian gatherings around the world.)

Happy Birthday, John Singer Sargent!

Visual Delights of Sargent's Watercolors

Here's a link to a video I put together of the many lovely watercolors displayed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibit of John Singer Sargent's paintings -- plus a few of his very famous portraits in oils that the MFA also has. I think you'll enjoy it! 

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/jwriter-1998638-watercolors-jss-show/

Fabulous Watercolors Exhibit

Visiting Boston earlier this week, I spent several hours at the MFA's spectacular exhibit of Sargent's watercolors--and of course, paid my obeisance to the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (more on that soon). Here are some of the exciting paintings on view. Get there if you can do it!

Re-Creating Sargent's Glorious Watercolors

Serendipity strikes again! The Historical Novel Society Conference in June in St. Petersburg, Florida, has yielded up a great new connection and resource from the extensive network of the historical fiction sister-and-brother-hood! Bruce Macbain, author of Roman Games and The Bull Slayer, and his wife Carol, purchased my Sargent book and lent it to a friend, Wendy Soneson, who happens to be a terrific artist and great fan of Sargent's. Wendy is currently scheduled to give demonstrations of Sargent's watercolor  technique at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in October, in conjunction with the huge exhibit of Sargent's watercolors there. Her websites are well worth looking at: www.wendysoneson.com and www.watercolorweekly.com for both the Sargent paintings and her own portraits and landscapes.

In the meantime, here is a wonderful version by Wendy of that infamous Amelie Gautreau (Madame X) in one of the gazillion poses Sargent tried before he found the right one. And a few more of his paintings, a la Wendy.

A Living Madame X

A few weeks ago, I attended (and helped plan and run) the 5th North American Historical Novel Society, held at the Hotel Vinoy in St. Petersburg, Florida. Three hundred-some historical fiction authors, editors, agents and just plain fans had a great time over the long weekend of sessions and parties and gatherings. At our 'dress-up' Saturday night dinner banquet, including a Costume pageant, one of our author-attendees, Leslie Carroll (her nom de plume is Juliet Gray), showed up dressed very much like the infamous Virginie Amelie Gautreau, Sargent's scandalous "Madame X". Of course, I had to take a picture of her in the proper pose, although there wasn't an appropriate little table nearby.  Thanks, Leslie!

The Family of Edward Darley Boit

After the period of time covered in my novel (1882-84),  hard times lay ahead for the Boit family, at least emotionally. Isa died in 1894, and the four girls (Florence, Jane, Mary Louisa and Julia), with their father, continued their travels throughout Europe, Great Britain and the U.S. But none of the girls liked America very much, and Ned, too, preferred the ease and openness of Europe to his native land. He was married again in 1897 to a very young woman, a friend of his daughter Mary Louisa, confusingly enough named Florence, and together they had two boys. Unfortunately, his second wife died a few weeks after giving birth to her second son, in 1902. After recovering from this untimely death, Ned renewed his interest in his painting, and mounted several exhibitions of his work (one with Sargent in Boston). Ned died in 1915, in Florence. 

As for the Boit daughters, Florence (leaning against the pillar in the painting) was always a rather odd duck, never evincing the slightest interest in marrying or attending the usual social events. She was an avid player of the relatively new sport of golf—which she introduced to the Boston area, inspiring the local rich folks to build a course at a country club in Newport. She and a cousin, Jane Boit Patten, nicknamed “Pat” to distinguish her from the innumerable Jane’s and Jeanie’s in the family, became fast friends and in later years, lived in what was called a “Boston marriage”, two spinster ladies living together. 

The second daughter, Jane (standing next to Florence, facing forward), both before Isa died and afterward, was ill a great deal, both physically and emotionally, and spent several periods of time in and out of “retreats” and institutions where she underwent various cures to allay her apparently rather violent fits of anger and depression. Not much is known about Mary Louisa (standing to the far left, hands behind her back) except that she and Julia (on the floor with her babydoll) were always together, and Julia became fairly well known for her paintings and illustrations in water colors. Florence died at age fifty-one, on December 8, 1919, in Paris. 

With the outbreak of WWII in 1939, the three remaining sisters moved back to the United States. Julia and Mary Louisa (also known as “Isa” like her mother) lived in Newport, where Mary Louisa died on June 27, 1945, at age seventy-one. Jane (or “Jeanie” as she was known) died at the age of eighty-five on November 8, 1955, in Greenwich, Connecticut. Julia passed away in February 1969, at the age of ninety-one.

Franz Hals - Inspiration for Sargent's Madame X?

For several months in 1883, John Singer Sargent worked feverishly to capture the image of Virginie Amelie Gautreau--soon to be known as the "infamous" Madame X--both at his studio in Paris, and later, at the summer chateau of the Gautreau family in the west of France in St.-Malo. Sargent had painted and sketched Mme. Gautreau in oils, watercolors, pastels and charcoal--sitting, standing, lying down, walking in the garden--and was unable to fix on the exact right pose and setting for what he desired to be a magnificent portrait. Here are some of his attempts.

In July he took a short break from his labors, and travelled with friends up to Haarlem, Netherlands. There he visited the Haarlem City Hall, which also served as an art museum for an incredible collection of Dutch masters, including one of Sargent's favorites, Franz Hals. (b. 1582 – d. 26 August

1666). Hals was known for having introduced a more familiar, intimate style of portraiture, especially in group portraits. Here on the left is a self-portrait done in his classic style, with loose brushwork, a plain background, and the sitter's shadow on the wall.
 
As I researched Sargent's life and travels, I took a close look at Hals' paintings, and decided that there was sufficient reason to consider Hals' style as an inspiration for the final portrait of Madame X. Not only is the plain brown background a striking effect, along with the shadow, but the odd twist of a sitter's body can often be seen in Hals' larger portraits. He frequently had his subjects touching a chair or table that was half in and half out of the frame. There is a subtlety and a richness in the deep blacks and browns, especially as contrasted with white collars and ruffs, and rosy skin. The most decided difference between any of Hals' subjects and the Madame X portrait is that Hals' people all look forward at the viewer, frank, open, honest, amused, interested. 

Not Madame X, however. She disdains to look the viewer in the eye. She is an inaccessible Beauty. Her skin is not rosy (except for her ear, where her pale powder makeup didn't reach, apparently--that rosy, natural-colored ear was quite a scandal). The alabaster color of her arms and shoulders, her neck and face, are the "white ruff" counterpart of Hals' paintings. Not even a necklace relieves the pallor of her skin, although the straps of her dress are diamonds in gold chain links. The original painting had her right shoulder strap falling down on her right arm--scandal again. She is dressed (or "barely dressed") all in black -- and as the ladies of Paris instantly realized, she's not wearing a corset, or any proper undergarments. It is a fact that shortly after Sargent returned from his trip to Haarlem, he fixed upon this pose, these colors, this dress as the component parts of his masterpiece, so I think I'm in a pretty safe place thinking Hals was the inspiration. After the uproar and outrage of its showing at the 1884 Salon, Sargent kept the painting in his studio and did not lend it out for exhibition until once in 1911 in Italy, and then finally at the 1915 San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exhibition. After that, rather than ship it back to England, he sold it to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it hangs in splendor today in the newly built wing of American Art.

Sargent and the Duchess of Marlborough

I just read an oddly entertaining historical novel, A Weekend at Blenheim, by J.P. Morrissey, that included not only Winston Churchill (as might be expected) but also John Singer Sargent! It is a gnarly tale of deceit, arrogance, lust, hate and blind ambition, and the aristocracy comes off as most unattractive to say the least. Consuelo (nee Vanderbilt) was an American heiress who was quite blatantly "married off" to the 9th Duke of Marlborough (known as "Sunny" which he absolutely was not) when they were both quite young, in 1895. Consuelo's wedding present of $2.5 million pretty much saved Blenheim from crumbling to pieces. The two were divorced, quite messily, by 1921. Anyway, in the novel, Sargent is there for the weekend, along with the purely fictional protagonist who is the plebian observer of all the wretched goings-on. Sargent is spoken of, sotto voce, as a "sodomist", yet is witnessed in flagrante with the Duchess by our intrepid observer who sees them through a window--the Duchess is posing nude while Sargent, also nude, makes ardently drawn charcoal sketches of her, then falls upon her with decided passion! (my my!)

Sargent did indeed paint an enormous portrait of the Duke's family (above)--not at all his best effort, imho--but he was "told" that it was to complement an earlier painting of the 4th Duke and his family by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Here is Reynolds' portrait, as well as a sketch of Duchess Consuelo by Sargent. 

Hmm, maybe there was something to that fictional affair after all?