John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent was born in Florence in 1856 to American parents who spent their lives travelling around Europe. He grew up between hotels and rented apartments, learned several languages, and drew constantly. In 1874 he entered the Paris studio of the portraitist Carolus-Duran, who taught his students to paint directly, laying in form with broad strokes of the brush instead of careful drawing. Sargent learned fast, and was exhibiting at the Paris Salon within a few years.

The works in our collection from the late 1870s show him exploring the Mediterranean. He spent the summer of 1878 on Capri, painting the island's rooftops, stairs and people: View of Capri, Staircase in Capri and Capri Girl on a Rooftop. A trip to Spain and North Africa in 1879–80 produced studies such as A Moroccan Street Scene.

In Paris his portraits made him famous, and then infamous. His full-length portrait of Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), shown at the Salon of 1884, caused a scandal for its daring pose and dress, and his Paris commissions dried up. In 1886 he moved to London, which would be his base for the rest of his life. The Poirson portraits in our collection, Mademoiselle Suzanne Poirson (1884) and Madame Paul Poirson (1885), come from these Paris years.

In England he slowly rebuilt his reputation, helped by Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885–86), now at Tate Britain. By the 1890s he was the most sought-after portraitist in Britain and America. His sitters included aristocrats, industrialists, actors and their families. Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (1889) shows the great actress in a costume embroidered with beetle-wing cases. Mrs Carl Meyer and Her Children (1896) and Elsie Wagg (1893) show his gift for fabrics, poise and personality.

Around 1907 he grew tired of commissions and largely gave up formal portraits. Instead he painted watercolours wherever he travelled, in Venice, the Alps, Spain and the Middle East. They are fast, luminous and very modern-looking. He also spent many years on murals for the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1918 he went to the Western Front as an official war artist, which led to the enormous painting Gassed, now at the Imperial War Museum.

Sargent never married. He died in London in 1925. His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Tate and the National Gallery of Art, among many others.