National Portrait Gallery February 28, 2020 - May 31, 2020
Sir William Blake Richmond / John Singer Sargent / c. 1910, Charcoal on paper / Lent by the National Portrait Gallery, London
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was one of the greatest portrait artists of his time. While he is best known for his powerful paintings, he largely ceased painting portraits in 1907 and turned instead to charcoal drawings to satisfy portrait commissions. These drawn portraits represent a substantial, yet often overlooked, part of his practice, and they demonstrate the same sense of immediacy, psychological sensitivity, and mastery of chiaroscuro that animate Sargent’s sitters on canvas.
John Singer Sargent,
Sybil Sassoon, later
Marchioness of Chomondeley
, 1912, charcoal
Private Collection
John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal is a long overdue celebration of Sargent’s achievements as a portrait draftsman. Important international loans, from both public and private collections, showcase Sargent’s sitters, many of them famous for their roles in politics, society, and the arts. The exhibition also explores the friendships and the networks of patronage that underpinned Sargent’s practice as a portrait draftsman in Edwardian Britain and Progressive Era America.
John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal is organized by the Morgan Library & Museum, New York and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
At the height of his success as a portraitist, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) astonished the transatlantic art world by suddenly abandoning oil painting in 1907. For the rest of his life, he explored likeness and identity through the medium of charcoal, producing several hundred portraits of individuals recognized for their accomplishments in fields such as art, music, literature and theater. “John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal” will be the first exhibition of Sargent’s portrait drawings in over fifty years. This once-in-a-lifetime assemblage of master drawings—many of them from private collections and rarely exhibited—features compelling depictions of an international network of trailblazing men and women who helped define twentieth-century Anglo-American culture.
