Celebrating the work of John Singer Sargent in London & the Cotswold Village of Broadway

By:  Blue Badge Tour Guide - Anne Bartlett

John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925)

I have just returned from London having seen the latest art exhibition at The Royal Academy in London entitled Sargent and the Sea. It was interesting to view American expatriate John Singer Sargent’s very early work undertaken when he was between the ages of 18 and 23.

Coming from a seafaring family, the sea was in his blood. Sargent spent much time on the coast and he sailed on steam ships crossing the ocean between America and Europe.

His experiments with painting the different moods of the sea from sheltered waters with waves glinting in the sun and gently splashing rocks, to fearsome storms and rolling seas was impressive but not totally accomplished. His painting “Atlantic Storm” painted in 1876 whilst on the stern of a ship shows huge irregular dark menacing waves with flumes of iridescent white water was cleverly executed. The threatening sky with rays of light breaking behind the clouds captures a moment very well. The zig zag luminescent wake of the ship as it’s lifted out of the trough and up over a wave into another trough is inspired and gives the viewer a sense of fear in a dangerous situation. The standpoint on the stern of a ship involves the viewer in the sea crossing; however the perspective of the ship is confusing.

Sargent’s love of painting fishing boats is evident and there are plenty of detailed sketches of sails and rigging. With his “En Route pour la peche” and “Fishing for Oysters at Cancale” he captures a moment in time. Women, wearing long skirts and aprons with shawls around their shoulders are walking and talking together as they carry their empty baskets down to the sea to collect fish. The reflections in the wet sand prepares the viewer for the hard work that the women are about to undertake in the chill of the sea breeze. A small boy in the group stops to turn up his trousers to prevent them getting wet, under the caring gaze of his mother.

I’m familiar with Sargent’s later work, his famous portrait paintings of English Aristocrats. At Blenheim Palace in the Red Drawing Room for example, there is the famous family painting of the 9th Duke of Marlborough, his wife, American born Consuelo Vanderbilt and their two sons painted in 1905 which is always mentioned by the room guides during a tour through the state rooms.

However the route from landscapes and seascapes to portraiture involved a scandal in Paris with Sargent arriving in London to escape humiliation and a wrecked career. He had persuaded society beauty Madame Gautreau, otherwise known as Madame X, to sit for him. She posed for him in a revealing black satin gown with thin jewelled shoulder straps, one of which had fallen off the shoulder. It was a very daring and suggestive stance which, when the salon opened for viewing, the visitors were shocked and consequently the reviews were very negative.

Shocked, ill and uninspired to ever paint again he was gently nursed back to health and encouraged to take up his paint brushes again by his friends, Edwin Abbey, Frank and Lily Millet, Alfred Parsons, Frederick and Alice Barnard, American actress Mary Anderson and her husband Antonio Navarro.

Summers were spent enjoying the picturesque rural charm of the attractive Cotswold village of Broadway. Frank Millet and his family rented Farnham House alongside the village green, then the following year they took Russell House and also acquired Abbots Grange a derelict monastic building which had a two storey barn in the garden which they converted to a studio. Edwin Abbey and Frank Millet painted inside, Henry James and Edmund Gosse wrote in the rooms upstairs and  John Sargent and Alfred Parsons painted en plein air just outside. They were all able to talk to one another as they worked.

They were a fun loving, laid-back Bohemian group who spent their mornings working on their projects, followed by games of tennis and afternoon tea, then music and dancing or games in the evenings. Nothing was too outrageous or shocking for them, even the local villagers dismissed their antics by saying “Them Americans is out again!”

In 1885 the idea of capturing the evening light as the sun set, together with the artificial light emanating from the Japanese lanterns that the two girls are holding, excited the friends. They encouraged Sargent to paint his picture which we now know as Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose as the sun was setting. He painted whilst the light lasted, which was for about ten minutes each evening. The painting took two years to complete, but the result is sensational.