Among the 34 artists who founded the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768, there were two women; you wouldn’t know it from Johan Zoffany’s famous group portrait of the founders in trousers and wigs. The scene is a lifeguard drawing lesson arranged around a nude male model. Except for the two excluded women, all of the artists are engaged in observation and chatter. Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, the agitators of the classes of life from which they were banned, exist only as a pair of sketchy canvases; two pale ghosts nailed to the wall.
Kauffman (1741-1807) had to wait a long time to return to the institution he founded, but the Royal Academy organized an elegant and selective exhibition that did not exaggerate his talents. Born in Switzerland and apprenticed to his father at an early age, Kauffman gained fame throughout Europe with his portraits, self-portraits and history paintings. His social network was second to none. The artist, who came to London with a pencil in his hand in his 20s after painting the German art historian Winckelmann, painted actors, socialites, aristocrats and eventually the monarchy before retreating to the continent where Goethe was his client. Sculptor Antonio Canova held his colossal funeral in Rome.
Half of Sargent’s sitters wore the newly fashionable black, and while visiting Monet, his friend was unable to work because he did not have black paint.
He’s a strange case: soft as candy, but also cunning and stubborn. Winckelmann’s dogged theorizing and David Garrick’s player-manager talent turn his head-down, lively gaze directly at us. In fact, a kind of broad theatricality is Kauffman’s own style. Sometimes it’s a matter of casting – Emma, Lady Hamilton, all grinning sashays in white chiffon as the comedy’s muse – and sometimes it’s a matter of vaguely painted backgrounds and props, like elements of a stage set. But mostly it is seen with all the subtlety of street signs in the way its figures pose, point and gesture.
Jesus has one hand on his chest and the other hand pointing directly above: Truly I am the Son of God. Come quickly This In a self-mythologizing portrait, he points to the muse of painting, while the muse of music tugs mournfully on Kauffman’s other hand. Women are at the center of everything – her specialty – begging, protecting, tugging on children, listening to poetry or simply waiting for the hero’s return. Penelope might have looked downright melancholy at the loom if she hadn’t turned her eyes so loudly towards the sky.
Kauffman was very close to the RA’s first president, Sir Joshua Reynolds; his portrait is gentle, transparent and mutually loving. However, their friendship was fraught with scandal as he was almost 20 years her senior and was satirized by an artist friend with a drawing of a child on an old man’s knee. When RA threatened to expose this, Kauffman sent a terrific letter (here). Respect my gender or return my pictures. He won.
I wish his art were this challenging instead of trendy. But there are moments of truth among neoclassical fantasies. A female artist with her mouth slightly open leans forward to draw the powerful Belvedere Torso. Another, brush in hand, appears to sweep a rainbow across the sky with a powerful whistling sound. They both roll up their sleeves and get to work: They tell us what it was like to be a woman painting in the late 18th century.
Anyone who thinks that clothes are not an integral part of art history can consider the case of Madame X, currently on display in the intriguing exhibition. Sargent and Fashion at Tate Britain. She stands there, nose in the air, one hand stretched impatiently on the table, performing a public performance in (and partially out of) her astonishing black dress. Black on black, form-fitting, alabaster hard, startlingly abrupt; a dress that shapes the painting as much as her body.
If it weren’t for the dress and her picture, we wouldn’t know Virginie Gautreau’s name. According to Sargent, clothes represent both men and women, and often the portrait itself. Liquid silk, shiny velvet, Lady Agnew’s lavender wisps of chiffon, the dull shine of the golden frog, the sizzling sharpness of lemon yellow satin: everything is depicted with astonishing synesthetic eloquence.
Sargent – flamboyant, fluid, addicted to appearances, fascinated by the clothes as much as the wearers, the surfaces of his canvases sometimes as bejeweled as a House of Worth gown (including a few originals) – is the ideal subject for such a show.
It opens with the colossal lament of an opera cloak, such as the one worn by Lady Sassoon in Sargent’s 1907 portrait; Her skin tone is the rose color of her undercoat, which reveals itself flirtatiously. Seeing them together, object and depiction, means thinking about how he (and she) shifts the light into deadly black swirls. Her contemporary Ena Wertheimer also tackles a challenging outfit, and you can feel the artist’s delight as she joyfully towers over her bright white lined dress.
Sargent can be swept away: Isa Boit, with her talkative smile, hard teeth and double chin, rough health in pink and black polka dots. Henry James described him as “extremely friendly…forever young,” which was exactly what he seemed. But it can also be empty as you look around at dull men in suits. US President Woodrow Wilson: What a surprisingly empty portrait.
The curation puts a nice emphasis on Sargent’s relationships with American ladies and awkward English ladies. The wall texts are humorous; It’s made up of feathers and iridescent insects: “The terrible damage fashion does to nature” and is filled with information. Half of his sitters wore black, which was newly fashionable in the 1880s, and Sargent, who was visiting Monet, was unable to work during the trip because his friend did not have black paint.
Photos show Sargent in rapid motion with a fag in his mouth during the sessions. It stars Percy Grainger and Ethel Smythe. When a stupid babysitter comes in the wrong color, she covers him with her own silk. The sitters began to dress up after their painting, and “when they bought a dress, they asked, ‘Will she paint?’ They reportedly asked:
Faced with real intelligence, Sargent is able to catch him: gay writer Vernon Lee; Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth in her insect costume. But he’s definitely more comfortable with being cocky. Lord Ribblesdale climbs 10 miles high in his riding jacket and absurdly low trousers; but a life-size photo shows that the real man is even more ridiculous.
Sargent gave them what they wanted; What they gave him in return was sometimes little more than social dress and costume. “Jacket is picture,” he said of a painfully loose fit. His self-portrait from 1906 is meticulously private: a face closed to the world. But by then he was at the height of fashion, a cartoonish public figure. Witness Max Beerbohm’s magnificent Sargent caricature, which subverts social portraits with two brushes for speed.
Star ratings (out of five)
Angelica Kauffman ★★★
Sargent and Fashion ★★★★