Art Eyewitness Review: Julia Margaret Cameron & Jane Austen Exhibits at the Morgan Library and Museum

Julia Margaret Cameron & Jane Austen at the Morgan

Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron

 May 30-September 14, 2025 

A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250

 June 6-September 14, 2025  

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Whether by chance or design, the Morgan Library and Museum is currently presenting parallel exhibitions detailing the lives of two of Great Britain's most accomplished women. Spanning the era of Britain's greatest global influence, the Morgan exhibitions show how these extraordinary individuals played key roles in shaping the development of literature and photography. 

Both Jane Austen and Julia Margaret Cameron made mighty contributions in exploring and depicting human emotion in naturalistic terms. Though their chosen forms of expression, word and image, were very different, there is an amazing continuum of creative energy and vision in the lives of Austen and Cameron. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

 Gallery views of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 and Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron, showing a replica of Jane Austen’s writing table & Julia Margaret Cameron’s lens

Jane Austen with her quill pen, Julia Margaret Cameron with a bulky, wooden box camera steered the development of English fiction and the nascent science of photography toward the realistic modalities we know today.

If, perchance, Jane Austen and Julia Margaret Cameron never struck you as kindred souls, the thought never occurred to me, either. On the surface, their lives were marked by few things in common besides the fact that these two women resided in southern England.

Miniature Portrait of Jane Austen, 19^th century.

 The Morgan Library and Museum.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was the gentile daughter of a Church of England clergyman. She lived a very insular life in the county of Hampshire. Austen seldom traveled far from her birthplace, Steventon, and the village of Chawton, where she spent her final years, quietly writing and revising her six novels. 

A visit to the nearby resort of Bath or to London was a very big deal for Jane Austen.

If Austen personified the "Little England" temperament, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) embodied the expansive attitudes of the British Empire. 

George Frederic Watts, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1850-52

Cameron was born in India, the daughter an official of the Bengal Civil Service. She married another member of the Anglo-Indian elite, twenty years her senior, by whom she had five children. Five orphaned children of relatives and an Irish beggar child named Mary Ryan were added to her brood, quite a difference from the life style of the unwed, childless Austen.

Julia Margaret Cameron was a take-charge person of decided opinions and not shy about expressing them. Overflowing with energy and ambition - and generosity - Cameron was a true memsahib.

The two exhibitions, each occupying one of the first floor galleries at the Morgan, brilliantly complement each other. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Gallery view of Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron

 at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Arresting Beauty draws on the vast holdings of Cameron photographs from the Victoria and Albert Museum. The exhibition has been shown at a number of other museums before coming to the Morgan. An especially notable feature of the exhibit is the display of Cameron's bronze camera lens, made in France. 

Many of the iconic images which Cameron first beheld with her camera lens are on display, along with lesser known though equally impressive ones. When Arresting Beauty concludes at the Morgan, the exhibit photos will return to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The V&A curators will withdraw the pictures from public view as part of a multi-year conservation process.   

So if Cameron's photo of a bored, peevish little girl dressed-up like an angel by Raphael is one of your favorites, see it now!

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

 Julia Margaret Cameron’s I Wait, 1872 

It should be noted - not by way of criticism - that all the works in Arresting Beauty are by Cameron. The absence of photos by her contemporaries, Roger Fenton, Clementina Hawarden and others, somewhat mutes the revolutionary impact of Cameron's pictures. But other exhibitions, such as From this Moment, Painting is Dead at the Barnes Foundation (2019), frequently provide such a comparative focus.

By contrast, A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 is a vintage Morgan enterprise.  Walking through this enchanting evocation of Austen's world brings to mind similar tributes at the Morgan to Charlotte Brontë and other literary masters.  Morgan exhibitions of this caliber deserve to be treasured, not merely enjoyed.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

 Gallery view of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, showing a letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen and a replica of Jane Austen’s Pelisse

Surviving artifacts once owned by Jane Austen are so rare, that several of the most notable items on view in the Morgan exhibit are reproductions. The actual objects are carefully preserved at Jane Austen's House, Chawton, England. 

Jane Austen’s silk pelisse, detail. Reconstruction created by

 Hilary Davidson, 2018. Photography by Luke Shear.

Given the exactitude with which the copy of Austen's silk pelisse was created, as shown by a fascinating video, the display of a replica is not a significant omission. Of course, every "Janeite" would love to see the original, while skeptics of the Jane Austen "cult" are quick to note that the 100% provenance of this elegant garment has yet to be absolutely proven.

However, untoward negativity about Austen memorabilia, along with churlish rebukes of Cameron for getting finger prints on her glass plate negatives, will simply not be tolerated in this review! 

Jane Austen,  Letter to Cassandra Austen, Bath, June 2, 1799.

 Morgan Library and Museum, Photography by Janny Chiu

There are a number of autograph letters and other authentic documents written by Jane Austen. But these are few in number, of necessity. This brings us to a painful head-shaking moment, which ultimately confronts all Austen scholars and enthusiasts: the destruction of the greater part of her letters.

Cassandra Austen, the author's sister, carefully sifted through her impressive archive of Austen's letters. She kept 160 and burned the rest. This occurred late in Cassandra's life, during the 1840's. By then, the identity of  "A Lady" was established as the author of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and the rest of the immortal novels. Austen's reputation was beginning to soar. Why destroy her letters?

The motivation was certainly not sibling envy or anger. The wall text of the Morgan exhibit quotes Cassandra on the day following Jane's death, "She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow. It is as if I have lost a part of myself."

The act of destroying correspondence after a person's death was actually a routine matter during the 1800's. But Cassandra Austen's action perfectly illustrates the law of unintended consequences. In seeking to safeguard her sister's privacy, she created the mystery and mystique of Jane Austen.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

 Gallery views of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250

In a surviving letter, Jane Austen stated that she wrote for "fame" not financial profit. This remark may well have been a joke between sisters, considering that her name did not appear on the title pages of her novels. We do know that Austen had a wonderful sense of humor, richly endowed with an awareness of the human comedy. 

The Regency Age, in which Austen lived, certainly supplied abundant grist for the mill of ironical commentary. Here are two examples from the Morgan exhibition.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

French language translation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

 by Isabelle de Montolieu, 1815

One of the fascinating objects on view at the Morgan is the French translation of Sense and Sensibility. A then-famous Swiss novelist, Isabelle de Montolieu, largely rewrote the novel to suit her taste, making Marianne Dashwood the main character, rather than her sister, Eleanor. De Montolieu boldly placed her name under the title of what she admitted was a "free translation." Austen was not consulted and likely never knew of this outrageous act of literary piracy. 

Another Regency-era scandal infiltrated the quiet world of Jane Austen. It is documented in the exhibition by an engraving made by William Blake of the celebrated "Mrs. Q". Austen saw the original painting in 1813. She was much taken by the portrait, believing it to be a fair resemblance of Jane Bennet (aka Mrs. Bingley) in Pride and Prejudice.

William Blake, Portrait of Mrs. Q., 1820 

The Morgan Library & Museum.

"Mrs Bingley is exactly herself," Austen wrote, comparing her protagonist to the visage of Mrs Q, "size, shaped face, features & sweetness; there never was a greater likeness... 

Never a greater likeness? On the surface, perhaps. Mrs Q was Georgiana Quentin, the wife of British cavalry officer, serving in the campaigns against Napoleon. While her hero husband was fighting at Waterloo, Mrs Quentin was serving the British government in another capacity  - as the mistress of the Prince Regent.

What these two less-than-admirable incidents illustrate is the kind of tawdry subject matter which might have infused the letters and other private writings of Jane Austen. Family gossip, anxiety over health, the price of dining in London  and, perhaps, the lack of a husband with a sizable income - these may also have figured in the many letters consigned to the flames.

Not exactly the stuff of literary immortality.

Instead of being remembered merely as a Regency-era figure, Jane Austen's reputation has grown with each generation until she has become revered like Shakespeare as "not of an age but for all time."

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

Gallery view of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, 

showing a display of modern editions of Pride and Prejudice 

The Morgan exhibit presents a fitting tribute to the"global" Jane Austen. A awesome array of popular editions of Pride and Prejudice testifies to the world-wide reach and enduring appeal of Austen and her beloved novels.

These wonderful books are on loan to the Morgan from an archive of Austen documents and memorabilia, collected by a great Jane Austen enthusiast named Alberta H. Burke. This collection was later donated to Goucher College in Baltimore.

The Pride and Prejudice display may also bring a smile or two to your lips, in keeping with Austen's remarkable comedic ability. I am still trying to decide which book cover is the funnier, the 1969 Italian edition which presents Eliza Bennet as a domintrix or the Serbian cover with an image of Jane Austen on what appears to be a 1950's black and white TV with bad reception.

Can the same glowing accolade that Ben Jonson bestowed on Shakespeare be extended to Julia Margaret Cameron, as well as Jane Austen? I certainly believe so. But rather than trying to prove this by a close study of Cameron's oeuvre, I will take a different approach.

Earlier in this essay, I stated that Jane Austen's reputation benefited from the "law of unintended consequences." So too, did that of Julia Margaret Cameron. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Gallery view of Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron

 at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Although Cameron had never touched a camera before receiving one as a Christmas present in 1863, she was not a complete amateur. She numbered the Swedish photographer, Oscar Gustave Rejlander, among her many friends. Before she began taking photos of her own, Cameron had practiced developing copies of Rejlander's from his glass-plate negatives.

Since Rejlander was famous for his tableau-vivant versions of Old Master paintings, it would have been natural for Cameron to follow suit. But it did not work out that way.

In a famous quote - which the Morgan uses in the exhibition title - Cameron proclaimed "I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied."

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

 Julia Margaret Cameron’s Angel at the Tomb (detail), 1870

Try though she might, and Cameron did try, "beauty" resisted her "arrest."

Cameron's attempts to use Bible stories and Arthurian legends as her theme seldom worked. When she tried to reprise Michelangelo's Erythraean Sibyl from the Sistine Chapel, the result did not evoke the Renaissance. Nor did this strikingly modern picture, dating to 1864, correspond to mid-Victorian aesthetics.

 

Contrasting views of Michelangelo’s Erythraean Sibyl and Julia Margaret Cameron’s A Sibyl after the manner of Michelangelo, 1864.

In 1877, an article in the American news journal, Harper's Weekly, astutely commented upon the reception of Cameron's photos at a London exhibition.

Photographers particularly turned up their noses at them, and held them as examples of the very worst photographs possible; and yet withal there was a mysterious quality about them which one could scarcely explain without analyzing them carefully. There was an amount of art feeling so suggestive that it claimed attention and admiration in spite of the faults which were apparent, and this very suggestiveness tempted many art critics to go into raptures over her work as something beyond the range of ordinary photographic achievement.

The "mysterious quality ... beyond the range of ordinary photographic achievement" was a manifestation of Cameron's innate genius. Cameron's talent lay in unlocking the true character of the people posing before her camera. Not tableau-vivants or role playing, but the real people beneath the often ridiculous costumes she induced them to wear.

To pose for Cameron, according to her friend and neighbor, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was to be a "victim." But in the course of these agonizing photo sessions, Cameron's creative alchemy seldom failed. Drawing on her inner "mystery", Cameron portrayed an ancient sibyl in modern garb. Taking her talents a step further, Cameron infused a sense of the ethereal, ineffable human soul into her portrait of Alice Liddel, posing as St. Agnes.

Julia Margaret Cameron, St. Agnes, 1872

The "mysterious quality ... beyond the range of ordinary" characterized the lives of Jane Austen and Julia Margaret Cameron. The origin of this "mysterious quality" is beyond the scope of an essay like this. But I have no doubt that the spiritual lives of Austen and Cameron instilled in them a sense of vision that raised their creative works to the status of high art.

In a beautiful touch, the Morgan curators have projected the words of Jane Austen's memorial from the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral on to the gallery floor of the Morgan.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

The words of the memorial for Jane Austen at Winchester Cathedral,

 projected on to the floor of the Morgan Library and Museum

Austen's memorial makes no mention of her literary talent or publishing success. Instead, it makes note of her "charity, devotion, faith and purity" which her family hoped would render "her soul acceptable in the sight of her Redeemer."

These heartfelt words are equally applicable to Julia Margaret Cameron who is buried in a neglected grave in Sri Lanka.

"Charity, devotion, faith and purity." Words to live by, words to create by, of an age and for all time.

***

Text and original images: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved.  

Unless otherwise noted all of the photos exhibiting in the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibition are from the Royal Photographic Society Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Introductory Image: Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (British 1852-1911) Julia Margaret Cameron, c. 1873. Albumen Print: 20 1/16 x 16 in. (50.96 x 40.64 cm.)  V&A

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery views of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 and Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron at the Morgan Library and Museum. Shown in the pictures are  replica of Jane Austen’s writing table from Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, U.K. and Julia Margaret Cameron’s camera lens, 5 ½ x 5 ½ x 11 13/16 inches ( 14 x 14 x 300 cm.) V&A collection.

Anonymous, Miniature Portrait of Jane Austen, 19^th century. The Morgan Library and Museum. AZ078

George Frederic Watts (British, 1817-1904) Julia Margaret Cameron, 1850-52. Oil on canvas: 24 x 20 in. (610 x 508 mm.) National Portrait Gallery, London. NPO 505046

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Julia Margaret Cameron’s I Wait, 1872. Albumen print: 24 x 19 15/16 in. (60.9. x 50.7. cm.) V&A

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery views of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, showing a display of an autograph letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen  and replica of Jane Austen’s Pelisse

Jane Austen’s silk pelisse, detail view. Reconstruction created by Hilary Davidson, 2028. On loan from Jane Austen”s House, Chawton, U.K. Photography by Luke Shear.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) Autograph letter to Cassandra Austen, Bath, June 2, 1799. Morgan Library and Museum, MA 977.4 Photography by Janny Chiu

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, at the Morgan Library and Museum

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) French language translation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility by Isabelle de Montolieu, 1815. From the Alberta H. Burke collection, Goucher College, Baltimore.

William Blake (1757-1827) Portrait of Mrs. Q. (Harriet Quentin), 1820. Stipple etching/engraving with mezzotint. The Morgan Library & Museum. 1998:36:4.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of the A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 exhibition, showing a display of modern editions of Pride and Prejudice in various European languages.

Art Eyewitness Image, showing Orgoglio e pregiudizio. (Milan: Editrice Piccoli, 1969), and Gordost I predasuda (Belgrade: Knjiga za Svakog, 1964) Both books from the Alberta and Henry Burke collection, Goucher College, Baltimore, Md.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Julia Margaret Cameron’s Angel at the Tomb (detail), 1870.

Art Eyewitness Image. Contrasting views of Michelangelo’s Erythraean Sibyl and Julia Margaret Cameron’s A Sibyl after the manner of Michelangelo, 1864.

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)  St. Agnes (Alice Liddel) 1872. Albumen print: 21 15/16 x 17 in. (55.7 x 43. cm.)

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of the A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 exhibition, showing a projection of the words of the memorial for Jane Austen on the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral.

Art Eyewitness Review: Sargent and Paris at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Sargent and Paris

Metropolitan Museum of  Art, April 27– August 3, 2025

Musée d’Orsay, Paris: Sept. 22, 2025 – January 11, 2026

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Original Photography by Anne Lloyd

It is no exaggeration to say that reputation of John Singer Sargent is riding the crest of a spectacular wave of scholarly appreciation and popular appeal. In just over three years, Sargent's artistic career has been the subject of three "once in a lifetime" exhibitions.

Beginning in the autumn of 2022 and extending into the spring of 2023, Sargent and Spain appeared at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and San Francisco's Legion of Honor Museum. Fashioned by Sargent followed at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, October 2023 to January 2024, afterward travelling to Tate Britain. Now, The Met is making its own statement on the genius of the great American master, Sargent and Paris.

This year marks the 100 year anniversary of the passing of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). This may explain in part the rationale for three major exhibitions on Sargent in rapid succession. But only in part. Sargent's gifts as an artist and his capacity for work are impossible to confine to a single exhibition, even of "once-in-a-lifetime" dimensions.

To a certain extent, the latest Sargent exhibit is a reprieve of The Met's landmark 2015 Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends.That is no cause for complaint.The 2015 Sargent exhibit ranks high among the greatest exhibitions reviewed in Art Eyewitness.

Gallery view of Sargent and Paris at the Metropolitan Museum 

 © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Sargent and Paris certainly deserves a hearty round of accolades, as well.

Sargent and Paris is highlighted by The Met's beloved Madame X, with other major paintings on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and European institutions. Examples from the full range of Sargent's early oeuvre are on view: student copies, landscapes, sketches, genre scenes and much more. A number of these works, to the best of my knowledge, have never been displayed before in an American exhibition.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 Gallery view of Sargent and Paris. The Portrait of Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White (Mrs. Henry White), 1883, appears in the background.

The focus of The Met's exhibition is the opening decade of Sargent's storied career. Beginning in 1874, when the 18-year Sargent joined the atelier of Carolus-Duran, the exhibit charts his brilliant progress in Belle Époque Paris. After a few short years, Sargent achieved the succès de scandale of Madame X (1883-84).

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 Gallery view of Sargent and Paris, showing

 Study of Mme Gautreau (Unfinished Replica of "Madame X"), 1884

Critical acclaim for Sargent, however, dimmed in the decades following his death.

For much of the twentieth century, Sargent was viewed as too much of an "Old Master" to fit into the narrative of modern art. It's not difficult to see why. Accomplished in every genre and technique associated with painting and drawing, Sargent made no concessions to the spate of "isms" which took hold of art beginning in the late 1880's.

 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

John Singer Sargent’s Self-Portrait, 1886

Yet, there is a deep irony to Sargent's place in art history. His commanding position in portraiture was rooted in more than a prodigy-like mastery of the canons of art. The young Sargent relentlessly sharpened his skill and insight with pencil drawings, oil sketches and water color, exploring unusual vantage points in the world about him and probing the unadorned human countenance, stripped of pretense. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) 

John Singer Sargent’s Spanish Roma Woman, 1876-1882

Sargent's teacher, Carolus-Duran, had much to offer his talented pupil. The Met exhibition has one of Carolus-Duran's portraits on display, dating to 1869, five years before Sargent began working under his tutelage. There can be little doubt that La Dame au Gant (Madame Carolus-Duran) was a major influence on Sargent's bravura portraits of Anglo-American grandees during the 1890's and early twentieth century.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 Carolus-Duran’s La Dame au Gant (Madame Carolus-Duran), 1869

Carolus-Duran was a major proponent of exactitude in details of the couture of his subjects, as well as their face and form. Initially, Sargent followed suit, not entirely to his advantage.

Sargent's first major portrait was of his friend, Frances Sherborne Ridley Watts. An American living in Europe like Sargent, Fanny Watts shifts in her seat, glaring at us with one gleaming eye, the other lost in shadow. 

John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Frances Sherborne Ridley Watts,1877

Miss Fanny is posed awkwardly, her discomfiture so evident that she appears ready to rise from her seat and join the viewer on the other side of the picture plane.

Three years later, Sargent painted another a seated lady. This time, his composition and technique could not be faulted. Sargent was no longer an apprentice or journeyman painter. He had become the artist we instantly recognize - Sargent the portrait master.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 John Singer Sargent’s Madame Ramón Subercaseaux, 1880

Madame Ramón Subercaseaux was the wife of a wealthy South American who had taken up residence in Paris. Sargent presents the musically-gifted woman as totally relaxed, at ease with herself and so confident that her piano recital will merit our approval that her expression almost dares us not to applaud.

 

Even though the setting is much more elaborate than that of his portrait of Fanny Watts, we really don't notice. Many of the details of the room are only sketched in, like the pattern of the rugs. The vase of flowers at the top of the painting is cropped in the style of Japanese prints.

With his portrait of Madame Subercaseaux, Sargent served notice that he would not devote himself to meticulous detail. Instead, Sargent evoked the character of his sitters with his artful handling of their body "language." The elegant hand of Madam Subercaseaux, delicately resting on the keyboard, is a fine illustration of his growing skill.

How had this transformation occurred? Had the young Sargent "doubled-down", painting portraits to the exclusion of all else. He certainly painted many a brilliant portrait during the decade of 1874-1885, quite a few unconventional ones, too

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madam Allouard-Jouan, ca. 1882

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 John Singer Sargent’s Edouard and Marie-Louise Pailleron (detail),1881

The secret of Sargent's rite of passage can be found in his ventures beyond the doors of the Carolus-Doran atelier. The impressive strides which we see in Madam Subercaseaux's portrait reflect Sargent's ability to create authentic settings in which to place his subjects that were not limited to domestic interiors.

Sargent was never professionally associated with the Impressionists and seldom painted en plein air, except in watercolor. Yet, in 1878, he created a brilliant genre scene, En route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish) that would not have been out of place the following year at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 John Singer Sargent’s En route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish), 1878

Perhaps even more important, given Sargent's career trajectory as the greatest society portrait painter of his era, is the 1879 painting, In the Luxembourg Gardens. This idyllic Parisian setting was a favored locale for the elite clientele who would shower Sargent with commissions in coming years. But high society does not take center stage in this painting. In fact, it is difficult at first to comprehend what is the focus of this urban landscape.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) 

John Singer Sargent’s In the Luxembourg Gardens, 1879

In the Luxembourg Gardens is an unorthodox painting which defies the conventions of pictorial composition. The stylish couple are walking, arm-in-arm, away from the center of the painting, as if exiting the scene. The glimmering pond, a tour de force of reflected light and shadow, is radically cropped, on the right-hand edge.The painting's vanishing point leads into the distance past a statue of no particular significance.

At first glance, this is a lovely painting which does not quite come together as a coherent whole. Is this really a scene with a yawning gap in its center? Why did Sargent not focus the composition on the superbly handled pond, shimmering in the light of the setting sun?

And then, after a moment or two of reflection, the sheer brilliance of Sargent's handling of pictorial space suddenly seizes hold of our attention. He has made us, the viewers, the subject of the painting. As the young couple ambles away toward the left, we take our place in the center of the composition. All the details of the scene, pond, visitors, statues, setting sun are as we see them.

With In the Luxembourg Gardens, Sargent proved that he could create a visual universe where every aspect came together in a harmonious whole. Three years later, he displayed the same level of genius, this time in an interior setting, with The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 Gallery View of Sargent and Paris, showing John Singer Sargent’s

 The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit

Four young girls, ranging in ages from toddler to adolescent, are posed in a modern rendition of Velazquez's celebrated Las Meninas. In 1879, Sargent had traveled to the Prado to study this greatest of Spanish paintings. One of his oil sketches of Las Meninas is on display in The Met exhibition. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 John Singer Sargent’s copy of Velazquez’ Las Meninas, 1879

When the Boit family, American ex-pats living in Paris, commissioned him to paint a portrait of their daughters, Sargent convinced them to let him pose the girls in a reprise of Velazquez.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 John Singer Sargent’s The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882

Like Las Meninas, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit is a painting of interior spaces, physical and emotional. Once again, we the viewers are brought into the visual dynamics of the picture, though not quite as thoroughly as In the Luxembourg Gardens. 

Three of the Boit girls look directly out of the picture at their parents - and at us. One turns away. There are always hidden sanctuaries of thought and feeling which remain elusive, just beyond the grasp of knowing by others - or even of self-knowledge. 

Surely, Sargent intended to address the inner-complexities of life with this audacious work of art. The Daughters is a true modern icon, as La Meninas had been in the seventeenth century.

As noted, one of the Boit sisters, Florence (the eldest) shows only the side of her face. It is interesting to reflect that while a person's profile prevents other people from looking directly at them, it is also a view of themselves they never see.

By the time he completed The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, Sargent had proven beyond dispute that he could a create entire realms of human action, the  world around us and the spiritual space within. But could he handle the ultimate challenge for a portrait painter, to take a human face, especially in-profile, and invest it with the spark of personality, making it recognizable to all, while still retaining an air of enigmatic mystery?

With Madam X, Sargent aimed to prove that no challenge in portrait painting was too great for him to handle. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (detail), 1883–84

Sargent had an additional, ulterior motive in painting this sensational portrait. He wanted to drive home a telling point. 

Critics in Paris were becoming anxious about the growing number and prestige of foreign artists. One French writer focused his ire on the Americans in Paris who "have painters, like Mr. Sargent, who take away our medals, and pretty women who eclipse ours."

When Sargent won a medal at the 1880 Salon for Madame Ramón Subercaseaux, controversy ensued. Madame Subercaseuaux was a native of Chile, not a French woman! And the artist was an "upstart" American! 

The honor of France was satisfied by reassigning Sargent's medal to another of his paintings, the double portrait of two French children, shown above. Sargent, however, determined to make his mark on his own terms.

Searching for an ally, Sargent enlisted the help of one of the celebrated beauties of Parisian society. Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau was actually a fellow-American. Born in 1859 in Louisiana to a French-Creole father and a French mother, her mother brought Virginia to live in France when her father died. 

Art Eyewitness Image (2025) 

Contrasting views of Virginie Gautreau, ca. 1878,

 and John Singer Sargent's Madam X

If Virginie Gautreau was one of the American "pretty women who eclipse ours" in the words of the French critic, it is difficult to prove that by her actual photo. However, Sargent was intrigued by her "strange, weird, fantastic, curious beauty." He was determined to paint a full-scale portrait of her - and take the French art world by storm.

Virginie Gautreau, as socially ambitious as Sargent was artistically, was only too willing to comply.

Sargent pulled-out all the stops to gain the full measure of his subject - and co-conspirator. He incessantly sketched the charismatic, vivacious Gautreau from every angle and in every mood. Sargent adapted his drawing technique to suit his purpose, varying from spare, refined line in one sketch to a fluid, almost painterly stroke in another.

Anne Lloyd, Photos (2025)

Drawings by John Singer Sargent, ca. 1883-84

Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, Study for “Madam X” (top);

 Whispers (Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau and a Friend)

The resulting archive of drawings is one of the most astonishing documentaries of a single human being in art history. These drawings are one of the highlights of Sargent and Paris. Visitors to the exhibition, surrounded by major oil paintings, should definitely devote considerable attention to these magnificent works on paper.

There is also a second, unfinished version of Madame X on view. Once thought to be a preliminary effort, it now appears that it was a replica of the original. Anticipating a huge success for his portrait of Virginie Gautreau, Sargent  prepared an additional copy to keep up with popular demand after the original was unveiled at the 1884 Salon.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 Gallery view of Sargent and Paris, at The Met,

 showing John Singer Sargent’s Madame X

Instead, the public display of the portrait of Virginie Gautreau, initially entitled Portrait de Mme ***, raised a public outcry. The denunciations, ranging from bad taste to moral degeneracy, are part of the legend of Sargent's career and need not be repeated at any great length in this review.

What needs to be stated is that John Singer Sargent lost the battle of Madame X and won the war. Talent, achievement, beauty are not the exclusive property of one nation or society. They are the gifts of artistic genius, crafted by those who devote themselves to their creation and share the result with all.

After the shock of the rejection of Madame X, Sargent moved to England and established his studio in the Chelsea section of London. There he kept Madame X on view to show prospective clients. Madame X worked her magic, helping Sargent become a very wealthy man.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025)

 John Singer Sargent in His Studio with the Painting of Madame X.

 Original photo by Adolphe Giraudon, ca.1884

In 1916, Sargent sold Madame X to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There she resides to this day, secure in a place reserved for an exclusive company of people and paintings:

Immortality.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved                                               

  Original photography, copyright of Anne Lloyd

Introductory image: Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (detail) Full citation of Madame X appears below.

Gallery view of the Sargent and Paris exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) Gallery view of the Sargent and Paris exhibition. The Portrait of Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White (Mrs. Henry White), 1883, appears in the background.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Sargent and Paris, showing Study of Mme Gautreau (Unfinished Replica of "Madame X"), ca. 1884. Oil on canvas:81 1/4 × 42 1/2 in. (206.4 × 107.9 cm) Tate Britain, London.(N04102)

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent’s Self-Portrait, 1886. Oil on canvas: 13 9/16 × 11 11/16 in. (34.5 × 29.7 cm) Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums (ABDAG003876)

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent’s Spanish Roma Woman, ca. 1876-1882. Oil on canvas: 29 x 23 5/8 in. (73.7 x 60 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art (10.64.10)

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) Carolus-Duran’s La Dame au Gant (Madame Carolus-Duran), painted in 1869.

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925) Portrait of Frances Sherborne Ridley Watts, 1877. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Oil on canvas: 41 11/16 in. × 32 in. (105.9 × 81.3 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art, (1962-193-1)

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent’s Madame Ramón Subercaseaux, 1880. Oil on canvas: 65 in. × 43 1/4 in. (165.1 × 109.9 cm) Sarofim Foundation

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madam Allouard-Jouan, ca. 1882. Oil on canvas: 29 5/16 × 22 1/4 in. (74.5 × 56.5 cm) Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (PPP03044)

 Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent’s Edouard and Marie-Louise Pailleron (detail), 1881. Oil on canvas: 60 × 69 in. (152.4 × 175.3 cm) Des Moines Art Center (1976.6)

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent’s En route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish), 1878. Oil on canvas: 31 in. × 48 3/8 in. (78.7 × 122.9 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, Corcoran Collection. 2014.79.32

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent’s In the Luxembourg Gardens, 1879. Oil on canvas: 25 7/8 × 36 3/8 in. (65.7 × 92.4 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) Gallery View showing John Singer Sargent’s The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882. Oil on canvas: 87 3/8 × 87 5/8 in. (221.9 × 222.6 cm) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent’s copy of Velazquez’ Las Meninas, 1879. Oil on canvas: 44 3/4 × 39 1/2 in. (113.7 × 100.3 cm) Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, 2019.21.1

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (detail), 1883–84. Oil on canvas: 82 1/8 × 43 1/4 in. (208.6 × 109.9 cm); Framed: 95 3/4 × 56 5/8 × 5 in. (243.2 × 143.8 × 12.7 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art (16.53)

Art Eyewitness Image (2025). Contrasting views of Virginia Gautreau (Photo from the Collection of the Bibliothèque de la Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris, ca.1878) and a detail of Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) Drawing by John Singer Sargent: Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, Study for “Madam X”, 1883-84. Graphite on paper: 9 11/16 × 13 7/16 in. (24.6 × 34.2 cm) The British Museum (1936,1116.3)

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) Drawing by John Singer Sargent: Whispers (Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau and a Friend), ca. 1883–84 Charcoal and graphite on off-white laid paper: 13 9/16 x 9 11/16 in. (34.4 x 24.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (50.130.117)

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Sargent and Paris, showing John Singer Sargent’s Madame X.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) John Singer Sargent in His Studio with the Painting of Madame X. Original photo by Adolphe Giraudon, ca.1884. Albumen silver print: 7 7/8 × 10 3/8 in. (20 × 26.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (2022.387)