John Singer Sargent...Who's Had Him?

Self portrait at age 30

I was just sick about missing this one. My partner didn't want to go and I wouldn't go to Boston alone.

Of course, after it had departed for the Tate, *then* he expressed an interest.

Thomas McKeller was the frequent subject of JSS's interest in BBC.

Well, R2, you've got a little over two months until August 3rd to get to New York City.

He tried it on with me ( can you blame him?), but my personal and professional interests were solely for the ladies.

R4, is Madame X at the Met? I thought she'd be on the London swing of the previous exhibition.

It absolutely is, r6! A highlight of the Met's new show.

It is supposedly the Met's most requested painting (of any school or period) for loan shows.

I plan to see the Met show this week. I love his paintings.

That's great, thank you! Maybe we will go. I haven't been to the city since before COVID.

I'm fond of his work, saw a large format portrait he'd painted for the Vanderbilts at Biltmore Estate many years ago.

[quote]"He was a frenzied bugger."

So many of us are when we're out of town.

This was back in the days when you had to paint your Grindr picture.

I fell in love with Dr. Pozzi when Armand brought him to my university 40+ years ago. He's stunning and very sexy.

Sargent was the favorite pupil of the society portraitist Charles Auguste Émile Durand, known as Carolus-Duran (1837 – 1917). He was a very progressive teacher who encouraged his students to paint freshly from nature, eschewing academic "perfection." Sargent's portrait of his beloved master is in the Clark Art Institute (sadly not included in the Met exhibition). Though Carolus-Duran was married and had three kids, I've always thought he and Sargent had a thing.

Carolus-Duran's remarkable "Sleeping Man (Self-Portrait)" in the Museum at Lille is one of the most sensual pictures of the nineteenth century.

R14 If you're a fag.

Is this a Caftan, R5?

I always assumed Duran was gay, R14. Well maybe at times he was.

Carolus Duran sometimes painted insipid looking women, but he rarely did wrong by a man's portrait.

"The Artist's Gardener," 1893

The last big Sargent exhibit I saw was at the National Gallery (DC), ages ago in 1999. It had 86 paintings and many other works.

I was less excited about the Sargent + Fashion exhibit at the State, but the Met show Sargent in Paris would have been good to see. But I'm not going to the US to see it.

[quote] It absolutely is, [R6]! A highlight of the Met's new show.

Madame X anchors the exhibit and is then followed by two more rooms of discussion and studies. While I happen to love the portrait and adore Singer Sargent in general, my major critique of this outing is that I felt that the space occupied by video and contemplative seating devoted to one painting would be better served if they could have found a way to give over the room to their cramped and claustrophobic cash cow, Superfine, the Costume Institute exhibit, next door.

I also wish that there weren't two exhibitions going on at the same time, especially since MFA seems to be the primary holder of many of his later works. Having access to those would have made for a different and even richer show.

But what I do love is that they do have the oh so sexy Dr. Pozzi from the Hammer Museum @ UCLA in addition to one of my all time favorite paintings, Margaret Stuyvesant White, which is property of the National Gallery in Washington, DC

Read The Grand Affair. Speculates in great detail about his romantic life.

John Singer Sargent is an insatiable bottom.

Little known fact — the “Singer” should be in quotes, as it was a nickname.

His lovers gave it to him, based on his melodious moans during orgasm.

OP, if anyones 'had him' dig them up.

After his death, his family destroyed his personal correspondence. Tells you all you need to know.

John Singer Sergeant was not a fag and I’m the dame to prove it!

OP, I knew Jacques-Émile Blanche, and he was a lying bitch!

R6 why would the Met loan out one of its most famous paintings when it has a new show of the same artist?

R23, from everything I've seen, he was into twinks. Many of the comments I've been reading over the years lead me to believe there must be a few Datalungers over 118.

The future "Madame X" as a child (left) & her sister, who didn't survive childhood.

Exquisite work. Hope a show comes near me soon.

It's interesting to look up what happened to his glamorous, intriguing sitters like Madame X, Elsie Palmer, et al. They all turn out to have led dreary, mundane lives.

Not so gilded an age, after all.

I always find Sargeant's painting of Dr. Pozzi incredibly erotic, which always surprises me because he reveals almost nothing about his body under that robe. It's all in the strikingly handsome face and the pose.

The real Dr. Samuel Pozzi was a notorious society horndogs in Paris during the Belle Epoque. Unfortunately he seems to have been pretty straight. But he had affairs with many famous French women during the era, including Sarah Bernhardt.

The new Sargent show at the Met in NYC is terrific, and contrary to what I expected, features many pictures I’ve never seen before. It covers his early years as a portraitist in Paris, a period that ended with the great scandal of Madame X at the 1884 Salon.

Aftervthat, Sargent left Paris for London and the U.S. which is when his career and reputation really took off.

R18 The Met’s show is fantastic and is going to Paris next year.

[quote] He was a frenzied bugger.

Does that mean what I think it means?

I love his portraiture.

The fact that he was sodomite is an added bonus.

I would have loved to have buggered him when he was in his prime, I'll tell you this much.

[quote]The Met’s show is fantastic and is going to Paris next year.

Thanks for that, R35. I will see it in Paris at the d’Orsay, then. (That's what I had thought initially, but somehow I got off track.)

Finally saw it today and will go back a few more times before it closes on August 3rd. It is really an excellent show that gives a sense of his immense talent. Many excellent works. Dr. Pozzi is mesmerizing.

According to Wikipedia, one of his clients wrote that when we in Venice all he was only interested in the gondoliers. Another said he was a "frenzied bugger."

Why do you suppose that it's taken so long for Sargent to acquire the love and admiration he now has? It seems to me it's only been in the last 15 years or so that his popularity has soared and that may be more among the general public than knowledgeable art critics.

Verificatia of Singer Sargent size-meat?

R41, when I studied Art History staring in the later 1970s he was revered in the museum world. Part of that might have been the interest in the late 19thC that surged starting from the later 1950s to the 1980s. Some big expositions from the 1980s secured him significant shelf space in museum bookstores that holds on today, and saw any paintings stuck away in the 1930s-50s brought into prominent view again.

Except for a couple decades of some harsh critics after his death, I think he's always been appreciated by art historians and museums. The "blockbuster exhibits" that arose from the late 1970a have included big retrospectives or themed exhibits at major institutions from the 1980s.

[quote]Verificatia of Singer Sargent size-meat?

Meh.

The Met does have a channel on YouTube, with a piece where the curator shows you around the Sargent exhibition. Doesn't cover everything but it's not bad. I'm in Australia so it's the best I could do anyway,

There are also pieces there on many of the Met Gala-related fashion exhibitions, in 2025 and previous.

[quote] Why do you suppose that it's taken so long for Sargent to acquire the love and admiration he now has? It seems to me it's only been in the last 15 years or so that his popularity has soared and that may be more among the general public than knowledgeable art critics.

There was a blockbuster multi-city exhibition organized by the Tate in 1999, with visits in Boston and DC as well as London.

Before then there was a big show in NYC at the Whitney in 1986.

In 2015, the Met had a wonderful show "Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends" .

I saw this yesterday. It struck me that the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit may be one of the first accurate depictions of autistic children. None of the girls married when they grew up, which was highly unusual for wealthy society girls.

Sargent may have also been on the Spectrum. Of course no one knew what it was back then, but neurodivergent people have always been drawn to each other. The girl staring back at him has the most profound expression, like she’s locked in some shared secret with the painter.

I love his watercolors.

[quote]Sargent may have also been on the Spectrum.

The Neurodivergent Troll is tedious.

r48: The portrait hangs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston flanked by the huge blue-and-white Japanese vases in the painting. The vases were only acquired by the museum in 1997.

R48 it’s based on Las Meninas for chrissake. Were the infanta and her dwarves also autistic?

Three of the four girls are staring back at the painter. Which one do you mean?

R52 surely you are aware of the, um, genetic eccentricities of the House of Habsburg.

What does that have to do with the autism troll?

R53 are you blind or something, only one of them is looking directly at the painter

As for autism, when I was introduced to this in art history in college twenty years ago my professor talked about the oddness of the painting and said people had suggested it depicted mental illness; I believe even Sister Wendy mentioned this when she talked about the painting in her grand tour of US Museums. These are hardly new ideas. I simple recognize the body language and facial characteristics as consistent with autistic children.

You simply made it up.

As for Las Meninas

If you understood anything about art, which you clearly don’t, because you are limited

The vanishing point in Las Meninas is the mirror above the Infanta’s head. The viewer occupies the space of King Phillip. The painting was made for King Phillip, so when he would stand in front of it, he would see himself “reflected.”

In Sargent’s picture, no such reflection exists. However, the vanishing point of the picture is now the daughter who stares back directly at the viewer. She s Sargent’s “reflection.”

John Singer Sargent will appear this season as a character on The Gilded Age--he'll be hired by the Russells to paint Gladys's portrait before her wedding.

R58. No one said anything about the king’s placement. The parallels between the young infants and others in the foreground, and the sisters, is well-established in art history. Bye now.

R57 for someone who posted a lot on this thread, you appear to be abjectly stupid.

It’s at 47:00. Sister Wendy points out the profound isolation of the girls and suggests Sargent intuited something.

So now there’s a Sister Wendy troll? I’ve had enough….oy vey!

You made up this: the body language and facial characteristics as consistent with autistic children.

Out of whole cloth.

Did he paint Wallstonecraft?

No, Mary died sixty years before he was born and he painted dead people only a couple of times when he was commissioned to do so.

She was however painted by two other Johns, Opie and Williamson.

Johnny's beard tickled my coglione for 25 years.

Like Henry James ,Lord Leighton,Thomas Eakins and other fin de seicle grand artistes Sargent was a starch collared closeted gay man with a penchant for working class Italian men.He lived across the street from Oscar Wilde who he loathed for overcompensatingly obvious reasons. Johnny's invertedness was not generally known in the equally closeted world of caucasian elite art critics until a stash of hundreds of his male nude sketches was found at the Gardner Museum. Art world equivalent of finding Grandpa's Playgirl mags in the attic. Apparently this high society"confirmed batchelor" also had a taste for "dark meat". Provoked much Academia pearl clutching. The old gits predictable hilarious reponse was "sexuallity was different in those days" or "he was chaste". No it wasn't and no he wasn't. Until they find Sargent's stash of female nudes with the paper stuck together I'm going with John Singer Queer Sargent .

When I was at UCLA used to walk over to Hammer and have lunch with Dr. Pozzi. He's right down the street from Marilyn. Very approprriate both their careers were built on sex and both had tragic deaths. Samuel Pozzi had scads of gay ami. Women, men (gay and straight) found him irresistibly charming and "disgustingly handsome" In addition he was intelligent and a brilliant gynecologist and surgeon. Those long fingers had been in the most famous chatte in gay Paree. Ironically he was murdered by a neurotic male civil servant who accused him of making him impotent after a operation to lift his saggy scotum. Was not pussy that killed Pozzi. As for closeted Johnny sure he had a gander under the rouge robe de chambre of Dr.Love.

Gurlfriend knew what she was about.

[quote] Frenzied Bugger.

Was there ever a better name for a punk band?

BTW Dr Love fucked Madam X bet Johnny watched.

[quote] from everything I've seen, he was into twinks.

MADAM X is not just a portrait of Virginie Avegno Gautreau, but of Sargent’s male lover (Albert de Belleroche) in drag.

See New York Times, May18, 2003. ART/ARCHITECTURE; “Sargent's Muses: Was Madame X Actually a Mister?” by Gioia Diliberto

Jeannette Cooperman APRIL 23, 2023

————————————

[italic]“With her striking profile, fashionable pallor, and exquisite figure, Amelie Gautreau circulated on the more daring fringes of Paris society—her hair and eyebrows henna-russet, her skin moon-glow pale,” Paul Fisher writes in a new biography, The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World. She was an acknowledged beauty—yet Fisher brings up a puzzling resemblance between her painted profile and that of Sargent’s close friend Albert de Belleroche.

Sargent spent a lot of time with de Belleroche in the two years he was struggling to capture Gautreau. And in Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast, a small, intimate portrait he made a year before Madame X, her features are identical to those of de Belleroche in Head of a Young Man in Profile.

Did the two, in weird coincidence, resemble one another? Was Sargent so captivated by de Belleroche and so fed up with Gautreau that he superimposed the man’s features on hers? Or was he so consumed by his work on the larger portrait that he painted Gautreau everywhere? Unable to compare photographs, I study other paintings of de Belleroche, then look again at Madame X. The same slanted forehead; strong nose; sharp chin; and chiseled lips with a heavier upper lip, the lower drawn back. Sensual, forceful, desirous, contemptuous. Maybe Sargent exaggerated the features of both, painting traits instead of slavish likenesses.

In any case, the puzzle’s early nod to gender fluidity is appropriate. Sargent was drawn to bold, rule-breaking women, to bohemians, to cultural difference and gender nonconformity. And in his own life, he—well, who knows? Fisher’s main ambition for his otherwise beautiful biography seems to be chasing down every possible indication of homosexuality—not in judgment, but for the scholarly fun of revealing an old secret. He is too honest a researcher to ever suggest he has found definitive proof, so on we go, with gossip dangled and snatched away on every page.

R63

“You made up this: the body language and facial characteristics as consistent with autistic children.

Out of whole cloth.”

First of all: I have read your other posts using trolldar. You are phenomenally stupid.

Second of all:

The girls are physically distant, not just symbolically. There is no group cohesion—no play, no interaction, no shared activity. Each child is anchored in her own sensory or psychological bubble. This fragmentation of space mirrors what many autistic children experience: parallel lives, nonverbal interaction, and sensory territory. It’s a room full of people, but each one exists in a slightly different dimension.

Paging Dr. Pozzi! Dr. Pozzi, you are needed in the drawing room to make an armchair diagnosis! 🤔

Dr Pozzi and Daughters of Edward Boit are in adjacent rooms at the Met Show and are a fascinating Freudian study.

Sargent made Dr. Pozzi resplendent in crimson red. Red is notable in Daughters through an unusually placed partition which forms a jagged shard, in front of one of the vases.

The vases can be interpreted as ovaries or breasts; the red partition is menstruation. Dr. Pozzi was not only a gynecologist but a lothario, he is utterly consumed by red. The red is human sexuality.

Sargent correctly intuited a disconnect between the girls - none of whom married - and the role they were intended for - pro-creation, and carrying out the lineage of the Boit family, which they did not do. Very few people would have understood this back then, and yet Sargent intuited it. Freud had only just graduated from the University of Vienna when Sargent painted the picture.

I got all my best ideas from the society portraits of John Singer Sargent!

So “Daughters of Edward Boit” should be retitled “Four Vagina Monologues?”

More like “Four Vagina Vows of Silence.”

Jeez, some of you really have twisted, overblown imaginations. And, no, he wasn't on the spectrum, he had many friends for years, was part of the social scene wherever he went, traveled, had lots of lovers, was hugely successful in Europe and the US.

He was an immensely talented, unique person. His formal education was extremely limited, but his artistic education was extensive, he worked extremely hard, often sketching for hours, visited museums to study the techniques of masters and famous contemporaries, he was bilingual and conversant in a few more, I'm sure (he had to speak with the gondoliers). He lead an expansive life, one we would all envy.

A high functioning autistic person can function in high society, painting its portraits while also observing ot and critiquing it with anthropological detachment.

It’s happened before.

A good friend is a distant relative

Amusing that out of the 4 billion people on the planet R81 is the only non-autistic. Pity it's an obcessed troll.

Johnny was an obcessed rough trade moustache rider.

The Met had a really similar Sargent show a few years back. Is this the same one?

r85: No.

This fragmentation of space mirrors what many autistic children experience: parallel lives, nonverbal interaction, and sensory territory…

Unless the daughters called JS over to dictate the scope of the painting, this argument is a non-starter. The painting is JS’s experience, not that of the daughters…

Dr Samuel Pozzi was much more than a famous lothario. He was "worshipped as a god" in Argentina where he founded several hospitals. His books on surgical gynecology were the standard text used for 30 years. None of his famous conquests had a bad word to say about him. Sarah Bernhardt a former amour referred to him as mon "Doctore Dieu" Pozzi tried to save Bernhardt's leg. She wanted him to cut it off but he declined(no doubt because he'd had it wrapped around his head so many times) As he lay dying from a gunshot wound he remained concious and was instructing the doctors how to operate to repair his bullet ridden abdomen. When he was murdered he got an elaborate funeral. A rue and a hospital are named for him in Paris. His son kept papa's defining portrait out of site fifty years. After he died in 1967 Armand Hammer snatched it up. He kept it private for 20 years till Dr.Love finally went on public display to wow them once again at Armand Hammer Museum in Westwood Ca. in 1990. Truly a remarkable heroic man even with his trousers on. Samuel deserves a bio pic.

Pozzi's examinations were also high society social events.

People could attend and observe his administrations on his patients with his long sensitive fingers.

R84, that one is hot!

Pozzi pronounced Pottzi

R88

Damn, that's hot!

R81 we get it hon. Your spawn is "special" so everyone else's must be too or your defective womb would be responsible. We condole you. Now leave us the fuck alone.

I want Pozzi's potent and possibly poz load deep inside me, even posthumously.

If you can get paid (and have a masterpice painted of you) for doing what you love it's a bonus.

Bio pic casting Theo James as the tre très charmant pussy expert Doctor Love

r88 is by far the most flattering photo I've seen of Dr. Pozzi. In others he looks less appealing.

He had a long life of renown. Shot to death at 71 yo.

Pozzuzu!

[quote]On 13 June 1918, Maurice Machu, a patient from 1915, approached Pozzi in his consulting room. Pozzi had operated on him for varicocele of the scrotum, and he believed he had become impotent as a result. Machu asked him to operate again. When Pozzi refused and advised Machu that he was "suffering from a nervous complaint", Machu shot him three times: "in the arm, the chest and the gut (or, alternatively, in the arm, the stomach and the back)". Then Machu shot himself in the head.

[quote]Pozzi ordered himself to be taken to the Astoria Hospital, which had been converted into a military hospital for wounded from WW I, but the emergency laparotomy was unsuccessful. He asked to be buried in his military uniform and died shortly afterwards.

Murdered over a varicocele! Which I also have! Don't know why he operated on it in the first place, they're mostly harmless.

R100 kill yourself now, before Grindr finds out about you.

r101 It's not even noticeable unless you're a medical professional. Grindr would have a far bigger issue with the fact that I only have one nut left and can't ejaculate after my cancer surgery. Not that I'm ever having sex again.

Well then, there you go.

The legendary pussy doc died over a "bag of worms"! No justice.

The vases can be interpreted as ovaries or breasts!

R100 Strange story. His murderer Manchu had written the famous Dr. Pozzi to help him as he believed his repulsive looking testicles were rendering him impotent. Pozzi agreed to perform surgery on this civil service clerk (a nobody) charge him a minimum fee and let him even make payments. This from a renowned physician who normally treated royalty and the rich at premium fees. Manchu seemed happy with the result of the operation. Continued to make payments even sent Dr. Pozzi Christmas cards. Then 2 years later he bursts in Pozzi's office and pumps three shots into the good doc. In the middle of WWI. And there was no woman involved. Really.

R105 The vases can be interpreted as testicular varicocele.

The Gift of The Vagi

I follow this guy on Instagram who brings vintage photos of historical figures to life using his AI skills. His user name is "bringing_history_to_life."

He's pretty good at this, and he's done more than one project featuring John Singer Sargent. With the one featured below he writes:

[quote] John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) Best known for painting the powerful and the poised, John Singer Sargent also exuded that very presence himself. Captured here in a rare full-length photograph, he stands with the same elegance and restraint he brought to canvas—immaculately dressed, contemplative, and composed. Though he’s revered for masterworks like Portrait of Madame X and his society portraits, seeing Sargent as the subject rather than the artist offers a fascinating glimpse into the man behind the brush. His eye for light, texture, and personality extended beyond his art—it was how he lived. Brought to life from an archival photograph, this image reminds us that even the ones who framed others in history deserve a frame of their own.

Causally boring, that is.

George V wasn’t available?

More Edward VII. He was never a looker. Grew the beard to hide a weak chin.Sargent was a big man with a big appetite. A chain smoker he always had a cigar in his mouth (when he didn't have a gondolier's cazzo in it) As he aged he got increasingly fat. Died in his sleep at 69 after a 12 course meal.

[quote]He kept it private for 20 years till Dr.Love finally went on public display to wow them once again at Armand Hammer Museum in Westwood Ca. in 1990. '

That would be a big surprise to the thousands who saw it when Hammer put it on tour with some of his other treasures in the early 1980s, including my university in 1984 where I fell in love with the good doctor, his gaze and those amazing fingers.

Elizabeth Peyton lithograph of John Singer Sargent

Doctor Pozzi At Home.... circa 2025

Dr Pozzi At Home With Amante