John singer sargent gay

Then came large and hugely popular retrospectives in the s. His male nudes were prolific and, to contemporary eyes, strikingly erotic.

There were also hundreds of patrons and professional associates, many of whom were his correspondents and some, including three of his male models, who described him in memoirs and reminiscences. John Singer Sargent (/ ˈsɑːrdʒənt /; January 12, – April 15, ) [1] was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury.

Book Review The Grand : As one of the most well-known American portrait painters, he is far from obscure, but for every thousand people that are familiar with his famous “Madame Pierre Gautreau” (“Madame X”), only one

He had sold out his talents for money and fame. At the peak of his career, he earned vast sums creating flashy images of millionaires and aristocrats and their families. Sargent was a lifelong bachelor who, although he was rumored once or twice to be close to proposing, never had a verified john singer sargent gay relationship with a woman.

He was a frenzied bugger. In a post-Freudian, post-sexual revolutionary world, nearly everything Sargent made seemed filled with a kind of urgent but languorous eroticism. Sargent painted only glittering surfaces, charged disillusioned admirers.

In all of the written documentation, there is hardly a hint of a secret life aside from a couple of hearsay rumors, nonspecific and unsubstantiated. THIS IS the unspoken story of the extraordinary relationship between John Singer Sargent (–), the preeminent portrait artist of high society of his era, and his African-American muse, Thomas McKeller.

After that, things went more or less quiet for several decades. Throughout his career, Sargent kept a wide circle of friends, which included prominent artists, like Whistler and Monet, and well-known writers, including Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Henry James, a close friend and mentor after Sargent relocated to London from Paris in the s.

He was old fashioned, out of date, and out of touch with the truly advanced art of his time. There were small exhibitions of drawings and watercolors, mostly private works, that struck a chord. [2][3] He created roughly oil paintings and more than 2, watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal.

Modern art had long since moved on. Spoiler alert: he never finds it. Born in Florence to American parents, Sargent lived mostly in Europe but he kept strong ties to the U.S., mainly Boston. This material has been sorted through again and again.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pages. On the other hand, he maintained close friendships with many male artists and with his male models, some of whom he worked with for years and one who became a long-term live-in valet. Could Sargent have been gay?

Yet, even then, doubts began to creep in. This biography is thoroughly researched, carefully plotted, and, for the most part, soundly based on fact and not assumptions. Fairbrother said yes, but the hard evidence is pretty thin. One of the most successful and best-known painters of the 19th century, John Singer Sargent had a virtuosity that astonished everyone, from his teachers and fellow students in Paris to the art establishment and his friends Whistler and Monet.

About half a century later, things began to turn again. He explores plenty of hints and suggestions, but as historian Teodoro A. Wertheimer Fisher does make use of the verified sources to great effect. John Singer Sargent (–) was an American painter, born in Florence, Italy, and trained in Paris, who lived mainly in England from onwards, with studios in Tite Street Chelsea and Fulham Road.