In the next few days, runway shows and presentations will demonstate the fashions for next spring. But on the Upper East Side, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a different of sartorial statement is being made: “John Singer Sargent’s Portraits of Friends” masterfully showcases the American artist’s
ability to paint his circle of friends, their fashions delivered with exquisite detail — a must-see for fashion folks who have a moment to spare between shows.
“When he could, he was picking what his sitters would wear or consulting with them,” said Stephanie Herdrich , Assistant Research Curator at the Met’s American Wing, who worked on the exhibition in New York with Elizabeth Kornhauser, the Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture. “Often, that becomes such a focal point of the portrait. There are even instances where he was supplying the dress of part of the costume and really controlling his sitters.”
Among the most striking examples of this: “Madame X,” the “professional beauty” from Louisiana who moved to Paris, in “that amazing black dress,” Herdrich said. “She had this – very daring for the period – décolleté with diamond-like straps and a velvet bodice and a satin skirt. Part of the scandal was that he showed her with the strap falling off her shoulder to accentuate the daring aspect of the dress.”
For the portrait of Ada Rehan, an Irish actress in New York, “Sargent used so many shades of white to suggest the texture, density, folds and drapes of the dress, which gives it a richness,” Herdrich noted. The painting of Mrs. Edward Darley Boit from Boston, meanwhile, impresses for different reasons—the pink and black polka dot dress. “I think it’s safe to say it was a risky fashion choice to be immortalized wearing that dress,” Herdrich said. “Some thought it was inappropriate but she was a spirited Bostonian woman.”
The exhibition was organized by London’s National Portrait Gallery in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Richard Ormond CBE has curated the exhibition with advice from H. Barbara Weinberg, the Metropolitan Museum’s Curator Emerita of American Paintings and Sculpture and a Sargent scholar.
“Sargent was really aware of what fashion says about a person and a sitter,” Herdrich noted, “using it very consciously to flatter the sitters, maytbe elevate their status, associate them perhaps with royalty or aristocrats.”
The exhibition, at the museum’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, will be open to the public through Oct. 4.