There’s nothing new about this, of course. Americans might have declared political independence but they still looked to Britain as an arbiter of style and culture from their earliest days. American money chose to build mansions that reflected English country houses. They vied to marry their daughters into the British aristocracy. The campus architecture at many top American universities apes Oxford and Cambridge; my sorority quadrangle in Evanston, Illinois, was designed to look like a Cotswolds village.
The height of this Anglo worship must surely have been the late 19th century, when vast amounts of American new money was trying to look old and believed that all things English offered the best fast track to becoming establishment.
Artist John Singer Sargent is one of the greatest representatives of this age, and one of the most artistically significant American expats to sink his roots in England. Those old v new, American v. England stories are lusciously represented in Tate Britain’s new show. It gives us both the artist as an example of the expat-gone-native, and lots of Americans keen to let the Sargent fairy dust polish off some of their New World edges. There are plenty of Brits here, too, but they tend to be the edgier, artsy ones. Even at the top of his game, Sargent’s American-ness would have put him slightly on the outside of the establishment. Such is the fate of the American cousin as immigrant, no matter how long he or she lives here.
This is not the focus of the show, however. It's a perspective I bring to it as an American who’s spent half her life in England. The curator’s objective … and a fabulous one it is … is to get you paying attention to Sargent and Fashion.
Portraits are always carefully composed to make a statement, but the late 19th century took this to extremes. Society was changing, people were leaping up ladders and, for some, power and wealth were growing exponentially. People wanted to show off, and Sargent was the man to help them do that. The show introduces us to an artist who worked much as a modern stylist does today, taking total control of someone’s clothes, accessories, and how they moved to convey a particular message.
Frans Hals and Anthony Van Dyck did the exact same thing, of course, which I’ve written about in reviews of previous exhibitions celebrating both men. But Sargent is so much closer to us in history that we have far more descriptions of what it was actually like sitting for him. We also, gloriously, have some of the clothes.
The first gallery lays down the premise in pink glory. Here is Sargent’s magnificent portrait of Aline Rothschild Sassoon, a socialite, artist and intellectual who draws you in with her kind eyes and warm smile. She’s enveloped in a black cloak with a pink lining that gapes open on the diagonal to create a pink slash across the painting. That slash makes the image. It’s somewhere between salmon and Barbie pink, and it jumps out vividly from the blacks of her cloak. This portrait is in a private collection and I’ve only ever seen photos of it; they simply can’t convey how magnificent that pink lining is. Even more magnificent is the fact that the actual cloak stands in a case next to the portrait, so you can compare the reality to what Sargent created. It’s obvious that he twisted and pinned the garment into shapes it never would have taken on its own to get his vision across.
This sets the mood for the rest of the show. (And will probably leave you weak with desire for a black, hooded opera cloak with a pink lining.)
Then there’s Mrs. Sears, who adored bright colours. One of her Worth gowns is on display here, a sumptuous design but in an unnatural greenish yellow it would take a supremely confident woman to wear even today. It would certainly grab all the attention in the room. Sargent dissuaded her from colour and painted her in a white gown, bringing all of our attention to her personality.
It’s a real treat to see the famous portrait of Ellen Terry playing Lady Macbeth next to the actual costume. Its bodice was knitted to mimic chain mail, then had green beetle wings attached all over it to give sparkle with a throbbing, Slytherin-esque menace.
Not so the men, of course, who look dashing and more than a bit rakish. One small but interesting
If W. Graham Robertson’s portrait isn’t a gay icon, it should be. Despite the summer heat at the time of painting, Sargent made the young artist, writer, collector and friend of Oscar Wilde wear a long, black overcoat a size too small for comfort. Who knew anyone could be so sexy swathed in that much wool. For the ultimate in male sex appeal, however, look a few pictures to the left where Parisian doctor Samuel-Jean Pozzi was talked out of his standard black suits and into a full length red dressing gown and Turkish slippers. He is beguiling.
Beyond all those wonderful clothes and personalities there’s much to admire here about Sargent’s painterly mechanics. He was a contemporary of the impressionists, and indeed close friends with Monet. You can see similarities to their style in the way his seemingly rushed, almost abstract dabs of paint melt into the perfect impression of lace, jewellery or other fine detailing when seen from a distance. But when it comes to faces he’s almost photo-realistic, given us dynamism and personality that’s obviously very specific to the sitter.
This show has divided reviewers, with a horrified Guardian giving it just one star while the Evening Standard gushed with five. How you feel about it tends to correspond with how much of an artistic purist you are, and if you consider fashion worthy enough to be categorised as art. Call me frivolous, but I’m all for the frocks and the fabulousness. And I think Sargent would be, too.
Sargent and Fashion is on at Tate Britain until 7 July. And if this sounds good you should probably check out Diva at the V&A, which I suspect has a similar vibe. It’s next on my list.
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