Food for the Soul: “Sargent and Fashion” Exhibition
John Singer Sargent. Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892. Oil on canvas. National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout
After John Singer Sargent died in 1925, his formal paintings of English and American socialites went out of fashion. Throughout the 20th century, the art world was giddy about other things—abstracts, installation art, pop—visual ideas very much removed from the realistic portraiture that was Sargent’s specialty. In that context, his style seemed to be similar to scores of other 19th-century artists like his teacher Carolus-Duran, James Tissot, or even French academics like Alexandre Cabanel.
