Product Description
By the time John Singer Sargent turned thirty in 1886, he already commanded an international reputation in the art world, creating a stream of works for exhibition that people eagerly awaited and discussed at length. Henry James noted that Sargent`s talent offered "the slightly `uncanny` spectacle" of an artist on the threshold of his career who in fact had nothing more to learn. This book explores how the young American painter in just over a decade jumped from apprenticeship to wide acclaim, how he presented himself and his works, and how he sought to shape public perception of his talent. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A wonderful synergy and collaboration.
I suppose that I bought this because of years of admiration for both Sargent and his friends, the Wertheimer family. Lord knows, it took me a few years to finally get a copy. The museum didn't anticipate the demand beyond just those attending the show in New York and printed too few copies.
Wertheimer was a Jewish dealer in art in turn of the 20th Century London. And the son of an arts dealer. Depending upon your character, you believe that he, with a good eye, presciently recognized the talent of the young Sargent newly settled in Britain and took a warm, avuncular and genuine liking to the man. Or you believe that Wertheimer cunningly assessed the odds and profits about this budding art star and, perhaps via some Mesmer, clouded Sargent under his dark and Asian spells. In fact, Wertheimer commisioned, and that seems too commercial a word for the relationship, young Sargent to paint Wertheimer's family. Asher invited Sargent into his home to paint anything that struck Sargent. Well, yes, even the several and beloved family dogs. Sadly, the lead painting of the group, of Asher Wertheimer and his favorite black poodle, was declared "too oriental" by the art critics of London. Yes, in this published, scarcely disguised bigotry Asher was said too oriental a subject and presumably his poodle too. This book, intentionally or not, presents both sides of the issue. On the one hand, argument is made that Sargent caught the man (and his family) just as he was, interior and exterior. Brilliantly. Contrariwise, there is criticism that such accuracy was also bigotry. Asher was given too oriental a face. But, accurately? For me this book really descends into a sort of circular schizophrenia. Sargent paints Asher with his beloved poodle and a signature cigar, both interpreted as included due some malevolent artistic eye. The cigar or just the pose and poise of Asher's hand with the cigar is interpreted as a grasping. I'm only a simple artist. To me I see only an affectionate and accurate depiction of a mentor returning the good feeling. Yet absolutely brilliantly done. Pure genius. The poodle in the lower left a museum worthy portrait in its own right. How was Asher supposed to be portrayed, as an Eskimo? Should he have been holding a frying pan? Should Asher have appeared open, with lolling carmine tongue but the poodle hooded and quick? Hey, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar! What anal and hyperanalytical nonsense.
But I go on too long. The quality of the reproductions is not the best. There is the unnecessary inclusion of some fiction, some novella if you will about sitting for Sargent. Trevor Fairbrother has an essay viewing Sargent (again) through his mauve-colored lenses explaining at least some of Sargent's genius as due Sargent's putative homosexuality. And at least some reasonableness in the booklet setting the Wertheimer commisions in the context of the ubiquitous and sometimes quite nasty antisemitism of the times.
I have this little and little more than booklet as an item of those times. I admire Sargent. I admire Asher Wertheimer and his family and am grateful for his support of Sargent early in his career. I can readily agree that both men genuinely liked each other and their families. I am glad that Wertheimer donated the some dozen paintings to the Tate. I'm glad that some other (Jewish) person donated the money the Tate said it need to display the suite. Although it isn't always crystal clear from the account in this book, the partnership of Wertheimer and Sargent was a triumph for art and for humanity. The show and this accompanying little book surely were intended to document and celebrate this fact. It succeeded only in part. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A life in art, well told
About 10 by 6 inches and 464 pages. Originally published 1955. 51 B&W images: illustrations, photos and reproductions. An index and footnotes as well as a full, separate notes section. There's a putative list of Sargent's works in oils, necessarily incomplete relative to today's knowledge due subsequent discoveries. (And only oils, no watercolors. An odd omission?)
This is a very well-written, informative and entertaining biography of John Sargent. The author himself is quite unusual and brings a singular perspective to the task. Researched and written, per the author's own statements, from about the end of WWII to 1955. This time window allows a decent interval from the subject's death, allowing both objectivity and yet still the opportunities available due the fact that some Sargent contemporaries still survived, albeit much advanced in age. By 1955 historical scholarship itself was more objective, mature since the first Sargent bios from the time of his death in the 20's. Mount's mode of writing is very human, intimate, personal; almost a conversational knitting together of quotes from the letters of Sargent and his correspondents. (Remember actual, literate mail? Before email?) Mount himself was a trained and practicing oils portrait painter. Thus, he plausibly could discuss the purely workman issues of painting. Metaphorically, he could speak of a working painter's magenta or mauve, opaque or transparent, rather than the wooliness of a room decorator'staupe carpet and teal drapes. Altogether, this seems a much livelier read than other bios. I fully recommend it, although it is hard to find.
Inevitably, in this age of internet searching, it will come up. Mount was indeed later briefly incarcerated. Accused and convicted of misappropriating rare documents from museums and the like. Well, I always say, "Nobody's perfect". In museums I myself have felt veritable lunar tides of desire. For just one of many examples, there's that Sargent in the de Young, "Trout Fishing in the Tyrol", after which I have lusted almost to the point of fainting. I gape open-mouthed for hours and, just joking, periodically glance left and right for guards between me and the nearest exit. No, I don't consider myself some latter day Marcel Proust; it's just that the painting is so ... And, I suspect many, many people suffer the same weakness.
If you can, get the book. It's an excellent read.


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Customer Reviews (1)

Charming bagatelle
16 "full color" stickers printed with photo images of Sargent paintings, four to each of four tiny, 4 1/16" by 5 1/2 " plates. Miniscule, little more than postage stamp size images. Said to be not simply in color, but "full-color". Color, yes, excellent color no. From Dover I have three tiny publications: this "Sargent 16 Art Stickers", "Sargent Notebook" and "Six Women's Portrait Cards". Each of the three includes "Lady Agnew of Lochnaw" and the color in each is quite different. At most one could possibly be accurate. But what a piss-ant quibble when the price is so low; the color is decent unto the purpose.
Some of your favorites are included, certainly some of mine. Oddly, not the original but rather the copy of Madame X that Sargent never quite finished. All images roughly equal in size and almost too small to begin to comprehend. But still quite charming. A lovely anachronism if you were to seal the envelope before posting a letter.
But who writes letters anymore, much less seals them. I suppose I bought the booklet simply because I was curious about anything "Sargent". So they sit in a dark desk drawer in that shabby shoe box holding my postage stamps. You know, that cardboard box with all of the odd and obsolete postage? Maybe a packet of 17 cent "Via Air Mails" boasting an image of a surplus Jenny biplane for your rush communication, jobs too large for the telegraph. Maybe a Pan Am Clipper?
Shucks, I think I'm going to use these stickers. Imagine how surprised my few friends will be to receive a letter, written, not typed (not computer printed) in a real envelope with an actual seal. And not just those free seals from the SPCA or the American Red Cross... No, a SARGENT STICKER. I'm going to do it. Tomorrow. First I have to think of something to write that I can't just say on the cell phone or in email.

I'm glad I bought these stickers. :) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Young Sargent, Nature and / or Nurture
This is a short (45 page) oversize (9 inch by 11 inch) black and white paperback published in 1991 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It's an exhibit catalog based on two 1870 sketchbooks restored at the Metropolitan. Sargent filled these as a 14-year-old on a three-week summer tramp through the Alps with his father. The works depicted appear to be in a variety of media: watercolor, graphite pencil and charcoal? Unfortunately for fully appreciating the watercolors, the reproductions are in black and white. There are several pages of informative text as well. As an aside, the author, researching the project, is said to have retraced the Sargents' intinerary through the mountains, proving that art scholarship is not always petty bickering over arcane marginalia of less and less relevance. Great work if you can get it!

Although these are not Sargent's earliest extant sketch books, they are efforts from a fourteen-year-old prior to any real formal and professional training in art. This claim is tenable, despite the stories of tutorial by Sargent's ever-at-her-easel mother, due the author's assessment of her own actual work. "The crude drawing style, incorrect perspective, and inept use of watercolor technique..." Well, perhaps she instilled a love of art, if not the concrete means to it. So these few works of little John Sargent offer interesting data on the timeline of his artistic development. And the book is worth it for this reason alone.

A neurophysiologist can tell you that the human eye is still developing, even physically at an age approaching six. That is, your four-year-old does not, cannot view the world as you do. The "hardware and software", the eye itself and the brain's use of the signals, is still not fully mature. And that is true whether your nature is such as to be ultimately 20-20 or sadly myopic. Similarly, if I remember Piaget correctly, the mean age for a human to properly understand the role of x-the-unknown in an algebra expression is twelve. Teaching college physics years ago, I could only politely remain silent when 20-year-old students would fault me with, "I can understand it when you have the sense to use real numbers like 12, instead of that x-the-unknown stuff!" A human reaching maturity is not simply a fully-formed vessel filling over the years with facts. Even the physical vessel is still finishing. Is this true in art as well?
For the sake of argument, assume that an artist develops in an analogous manner.
If so, in my opinion, the watercolors of the 14-year-old Sargent are already quite remarkable, mature, at least in black and white. Particularly "The Matterhorn from Zmutt Glacier, Zermatt". In fact, it is quite astonishing. The watercolors seem further advanced than do the linear media, pencil or charcoal, particularly the figures. That relative difficulty is particularly interesting, due even an infant's experimentally determined "expertise" at recognizing faces. At fourteen has the mind already firmly ensconced symbols for the objective reality, the usual problem in accurate rendition. And, does this thus require the 14-year-old extra effort to unlearn, to de-automate the seeing of people as opposed to scenes or objects? This opinion of course is only as regards a pleasing realism. As to the other elements of what constitutes art, how does all this this jibe with the view popularized in Betty Edward's books, that an adult attempting art is a ruined child? The adult obsessed with photo accuracy and devoid of fantasy? The free-flowing creativity of a child is silenced by the adult's drive to conformity, conformity as realism.
For those more interested in pursuing these topics, "American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art JOHN SINGER SARGENT", published by that institution in 2000, offers a very complete set of Sargent drawings and watercolors, including those from this period of his life. Therein one can see not just much more but also watercolors reproduced in color.

All in all, studying the book well repaid me, offered much food for thought about the development of a great artist and any artistic effort at all.
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Customer Reviews (29)

Much Better Than I Expected
I'm going easy on this review partly because it was a very entertaining read and made my lunch break at work more enjoyable and partly because I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that Davis's writing wasn't half as vacant as I expected it to be from her bio on the back.

Strapless is not, as others have commented, a particularly deep or scholarly work. It's a light, entertaining read for those already familiar with Sargent's works who wish to know a little more about one of his most famous subjects. While I would recommend the book to anyone looking to find out more about one of the most infamous painted works in modern art, while I was reading through the text I found myself thinking time and time again that a person who knows a bit more about other artists, painters and musicians of the time will get more out of this. After all, I doubt the average "Joe" on the street will understand what she means when she makes a comparison between the scandals surrounding both Madam X and Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. However I can't imagine this would hinder anyone's appreciation of the book.

I was very pleased with the amount of research Davis has put into her book and even though I consider myself to be a huge Sargent fan I found even a few tidbits of information that I hadn't known before. For someone who has their background in screen writing she also managed to stay blissfully free of the trap that so many other pop historians fall into - superimposing her own feelings about people onto certain events and situations. Davis does a find job of sticking to facts and even took the time to rereview several of her peers who had previously written on Sargent in order to debunk a few glaring errors in their research.

My only complaint about this book is that she seems to have trouble making it all mesh together. We jump from one story to the next, from one fact to the next without any connective tissue between them to flesh out the body of work. And while Davis obviously did her homework at times it seems that she did it a little too well. An entire passage in the beginning of the book is dedicated to the rise of Paris's first department store with out apparent meaning or connection to the story at hand.

But really when all is said and done Davis does deserve her due and for choosing a subject that would inevitably be scrutinized so closely by so many people, and she has yet to do disservice to her readers. Four stars well earned.

Incredibly Interesting!
After reading Gilded and liking it so much, I decided to read another of Deborah Davis' books.Strapless was excellent.It gave a wonderful overview of the time through the lens of the history of the spectacular Madame X portrait.

Strapless, John Singer Sergeant and the fall of Madame X
I suggest readers get a book of Sargent's paintings before reading this book.Most libraries will have one.I've sent a copy of this to my sister who usually lends her books to my brother after reading them.She treasures this one, so she will keep it.Loved it. For anyone interested in art and history this is fun reading.

A good introduction to a fascinating era
The book itself could have used some better editing, as the author has trouble weaving together two different life stories as well as the necessary cultural background.

But the stories themselves are fascinating, especially to fans of late 1800s art. This tells the tale of an artist, a society woman, and the role art played in 19th century French society. It, of course, includes rivalries, vanities, and great supporting characters like famous authors, overbearing mothers, and a lothario doctor that managed to revolutionize women's medicine...in his spare time.

Much enjoyed book
For many years now Sargent and Rembrandt have been my two favorite painters.I never really knew much about Sargent's life except that I heard that he painted with a trowel!I have seen Madame X at the Metropolitan many times and have seen many of his paintings here in Boston. I have not found portraits to be the most interesting paintings, but it has been his technical abilities which I admired so much. Some of his watercolors have flabbergasted me by their display of technical ability.Finally, I saw an exhibit of his landscapes at the Gardner museum here and know of no other painter as impressive in this regard.I also learned that it apparently was landscape painting which was his favorite and it was those which awed me as much as some of the watercolors.At any rate, reading this book told me more about Sargent, rendering him more alive to me. I also greatly enjoyed reading about Paris during the Belle Epoque.Unfortunately, I know very little about Rembrandt's life.In conclusion, it was great fun to read this book; not as dramatic as "Lust for Life", but nevertheless a very enjoyable trip. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

A classic title... Already!
Any serious student of the arts should read this. And you need to go to the Gardner in Boston to see the painting too. It's just mind blowing.
People want $140 bucks and up for this paperback. Don't pay it.
I got mine at the Gardner for ten bucks, lost it in Katrina, waited and got a used one for twenty. Or search the library.
it's paperback- and owning one is a trust, they are limited. It needs to be reissued.

So Seargent and Manet and a few other young artists ran of to Spain to squander a little youth- and some amazing things came of it. Historians of all kinds seem to have blackballed Spain, but this book is about a journey and the amazing painting that came of it.
If you can't buy it- find one and read it.

'The best painting Sargent ever painted...'
An excellent history and detailed analysis of the classic painting by John Singer Sargent. Although known mostly as a nineteenth century portaitist, Sargent's depiction of a Spanish dancer in El Jaleo received much critical acclaim. The book traces Sargent's artisitic influences and fascination with Spanish culture which inspired him to paint El Jaleo. There is also a great section featuring many of Sargent's early sketches and design studies. This book is a great reference for anyone interested in Sargent or this masterpiece of his early works. ... Read more