John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal

I'm Colin B. Bailey, director of the Morgan Library and Museum. John Singer Sargent was one of the greatest portrait artists of his time. While he is best known for his powerful paintings, he largely ceased painting portraits in 1907 and turned instead to charcoal drawings to satisfy the continuing demand for portrait commissions. Sargent's drawn portraits represent a substantial yet often overlooked part of his practice and they demonstrate the same sense of immediacy and psychological sensitivity that animate Sargent's sitters on canvas. Our exhibition explores the artist's expressive portraits in charcoal and recognizes the sheer scale of Sargent's achievement as a portrait draftsman. John Singer Sargent, Portraits in Charcoal, is on view at the Morgan Library and Museum between October 4th, 2019 through January 12th, 2020. When we think of Sargent's portraiture, we think of these large, full-length oil paintings. In 1907, when Sargent was at the peak of his powers, he was done painting portraits. He wrote to one friend saying, I abhor and abjure them and I hope never to do another, especially of the upper classes. Sargent's clients still wanted to have their portraits made by the artist and so he came up with doing them in charcoal as a kind of compromise. With charcoal, he could produce a portrait in less than three hours. An oil portrait, by contrast, could take weeks or months. Sargent made, in his lifetime, over 750 of these charcoal portraits. Most of them have never been seen before. It's an entirely overlooked aspect of his career and when you look at them, they have a kind of freshness to them. They're reminiscent of his paintings in the way that he captures the vivacity of his sitters but the charcoal gives them a kind of spontaneity that is completely unique to the drawings and really showcase his talents as a portrait draftsman. All of the charcoal portraits in this exhibition were intended as autonomous works of art. They weren't studies for later paintings but were rather intended to simply serve as a work of art in and of themselves. When you look at the portraits in this exhibition, you're getting a good glimpse into Sargent's social network. He was so popular in his portraiture that you really had to have an in with the artist in order to get a sitting. At the same time, many of the people that Sargent portrayed were some of his dearest friends. There's never been a major exhibition devoted to these portraits. This exhibition brings together over 50 of his portraits in charcoal which gives a great sense of his abilities as a draftsman and his abilities to render the people that he knew and was interested in.