Editing John Singer Sargent (section)

==Critical assessment==
[[File:Arsène Vigeant-John Singer Sargent mg 9497.jpg|thumb|''Arsène Vigeant'', 1885, [[Musée de Metz|Musées de Metz]]]]

In a time when the art world focused, in turn, on [[Impressionism]], [[Fauvism]], and [[Cubism]], Sargent practiced his own form of [[Realism (arts)|Realism]], which made brilliant references to [[Diego Velázquez|Velázquez]], [[Van Dyck]], and [[Thomas Gainsborough|Gainsborough]]. His seemingly effortless facility for paraphrasing the masters in a contemporary fashion led to a stream of commissioned portraits of remarkable virtuosity (''[[Arsène Vigeant]]'', 1885, Musées de Metz; ''[[:Image:MrMrsINPhelpsStokes1897.JPG|Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Newton Phelps-Stokes]]'', 1897, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and earned Sargent the moniker, "the Van Dyck of our times".<ref>This from [[Auguste Rodin]], upon seeing ''The Misses Hunter'' in 1902. Ormond & Kilmurray (1998), p. 150.</ref> In 1916, he was awarded an honorary degree by Harvard University.<ref>{{Cite web |last=University |first=Harvard |title=History of honorary degrees |url=https://www.harvard.edu/about/history/honorary-degrees/ |access-date=May 21, 2024 |website=Harvard University |language=en-US}}</ref>

Still, during his life his work engendered negative responses from some of his colleagues: [[Camille Pissarro]] wrote "he is not an enthusiast but rather an adroit performer",<ref>Rewald, John: ''Camille Pissarro: Letters to his Son Lucien'', p. 183. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.</ref> and [[Walter Sickert]] published a satirical turn under the heading "Sargentolatry".<ref name="Ormond (1998), page 276, 1998" /> By the time of his death, he was dismissed as an anachronism, a relic of the [[Gilded Age]] and out of step with the artistic sentiments of post-World War I Europe. [[Elizabeth Prettejohn]] suggests that the decline of Sargent's reputation was due partly to the rise of anti-Semitism, and the resultant intolerance of 'celebrations of Jewish prosperity.'<ref name="Prettejohn (1998), p. 73">Prettejohn (1998), p. 73.</ref> It has been suggested that the exotic qualities<ref>Sargent's friend Vernon Lee referred to the artist's "outspoken love of the exotic&nbsp;... the unavowed love of rare kinds of beauty, for incredible types of elegance". Charteris (1927), p. 252.</ref> inherent in his work appealed to the sympathies of the Jewish clients whom he painted from the 1890s on.

[[File:Almina Daughter of Asher Wertheimer by J S Sargent.jpg|thumb|upright|Sargent emphasized Almina Wertheimer's exotic beauty in 1908 by dressing her ''[[Turquerie|en turquerie]]''.|left]]

Nowhere is this more apparent than in his portrait ''[[:Image:Almina Daughter of Asher Wertheimer by J S Sargent.jpg|Almina, Daughter of Asher Wertheimer]]'' (1908), in which the subject is seen wearing a [[Persia]]n costume, a pearl encrusted turban, and strumming an Indian [[Tanpura (instrument)|tambura]], accoutrements all meant to convey sensuality and mystery. If Sargent used this portrait to explore issues of sexuality and identity, it seems to have met with the satisfaction of the subject's father, Asher Wertheimer, a wealthy Jewish art dealer.<ref name="Ormond (1998), page 169-171, 1998">Ormond (1998), pp. 169–171, 1998.</ref>

Foremost of Sargent's detractors was the influential English art critic [[Roger Fry]], of the [[Bloomsbury Group]], who at the 1926 Sargent retrospective in London dismissed Sargent's work as lacking aesthetic quality: "Wonderful indeed, but most wonderful that this wonderful performance should ever have been confused with that of an artist."<ref name="Prettejohn (1998), p. 73" /> In the 1930s, [[Lewis Mumford]] led a chorus of the severest critics: "Sargent remained to the end an illustrator&nbsp;... the most adroit appearance of workmanship, the most dashing eye for effect, cannot conceal the essential emptiness of Sargent's mind, or the contemptuous and cynical superficiality of a certain part of his execution."

Part of Sargent's devaluation is also attributed to his expatriate life, which made him seem less American at a time when "authentic" socially conscious American art, as exemplified by the [[Alfred Stieglitz|Stieglitz]] circle and by the [[Ashcan School]], was on the ascent.<ref>Fairbrother (1994), p. 140.</ref>

After such a long period of critical disfavor, Sargent's reputation has increased steadily since the 1950s.<ref name="Franz Schulze 1980 pp. 90–96" /> In the 1960s, a revival of Victorian art and new scholarship directed at Sargent strengthened his reputation.<ref>Fairbrother (1994), p. 141.</ref> Sargent has been the subject of large-scale exhibitions in major museums, including a retrospective exhibition at the [[Whitney Museum of American Art]] in 1986 and a major 1999 traveling show that exhibited at the [[Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]], the [[National Gallery of Art Washington]], and the [[National Gallery, London|National Gallery]], London. In 2022, the [[National Gallery of Art]] in Washington, DC, and in 2023 the [[Legion of Honor (museum)|Legion of Honor]] in San Francisco, California, hosted an exhibition of Sargent's paintings from Spain.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2022/sargent-and-spain.html |title=Sargent and Spain|date=October 2, 2022 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.famsf.org/exhibitions/sargent-and-spain |title=Sargent and Spain}}</ref>

In 1986, [[Andy Warhol]] commented to Sargent scholar Trevor Fairbrother that Sargent "made everybody look glamorous. Taller. Thinner. But they all have mood, every one of them has a different mood."<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa371.htm |title=John Singer Sargent |access-date=July 31, 2012 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120320041951/http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa371.htm |archive-date=March 20, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last=Fairbrother |first=Trevor |title=Warhol Meets Sargent at Whitney |magazine=Arts Magazine |issue=6 |date=February 1987 |pages=64–71}}</ref> In a [[Time (magazine)|''Time'' magazine]] article from the 1980s, critic [[Robert Hughes (critic)|Robert Hughes]] praised Sargent as "the unrivaled recorder of male power and female beauty in a day that, like ours, paid excessive court to both".<ref>Fairbrother (1994), p. 145.</ref>