A Scandalous Success

Sargent and Paris, organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, examines how the City of Lights was fertile soil for John Singer Sargent’s meteoritic rise, with a deep dive into his masterpiece, Madame X

Patti Zielinski

Long before smartphone selfies and the use of social media to catapult one’s status to attract—or become—an influencer, social climbers in late 19^th-century Paris turned to the event of the year: The Salon. This see-and-be-seen event, where the upper echelon of Parisians mingled with rising and accomplished artists, could make— or break —careers and reputations.

In the Luxembourg Gardens, 1879.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Such was the milieu that 18-year-old John Singer Sargent entered upon moving to Paris in 1874, seeking to hone his technique and achieve acclaim and patronage. The ensuing decade for Sargent was an immersion into the Paris art world, fueled by in-depth studies at galleries and museums, mentorships, matriculation at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was influenced by traditional academic techniques, and entre into high society, where the elite increasingly sought him out for portraiture, which was enjoying newfound recognition as a legitimate art form.

Madame X, 1883-84,
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sargent and Paris (April 27 to August 3), which originates at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and travels to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the exhibition’s co-organizer, captures Sargent’s meteoric rise during this pivotal decade and does a deep-dive into the painting that set the art world aflame: The scandalous portrait Madame X.

Coinciding with the centennial of the artist’s death, Sargent and Paris includes approximately 100 works of art—preparatory sketches, paintings, watercolors and drawings, as well as a select group of portraits by artists who inspired Sargent and with whom he competed for commissions and recognition, including his teachers Carolus-Duran and Léon Bonnat, and artistic role models such as Édouard Manet.

Paul Helleu Sketching with His Wife, 1889.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The exhibition is the largest international show of Sargent’s work since 1998 and the first monographic exhibition of his art in France. It offers a rare window into the artistic processes of one of the greatest American artists and sheds new light on his distinctive vision: For the first time ever, the exhibition will reunite Madame X with its numerous preparatory drawings and paintings.

“Sargent’s career was indelibly shaped by the time he spent in Paris. Over the course of one remarkable decade, he created the boldest and most daring paintings of his oeuvre,” says exhibition curator Stephanie L. Herdrich, the Met’s Curator of American Painting and Drawing.

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