Sargent's Artist-Friends

One of the great blessings of being an artist is having friends who also are artists.  Young (broke) artists can sit (gratis) as models for their friends.  They can give pictures to their friends.  Or they can trade works with their friends—thereby growing their collections and creating works which will have great historical importance in the future.  John Singer Sargent was blessed with many artist-friends—many of whom he painted for pleasure (not as commissions).

Shown above, an experimental double portrait of two friends of Sargent's, both French artists: François Flameng and Paul Helleu (c. 1880).  It may have been inspired by a work by Frans Hals, The Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Civic Guard (1627) which Sargent had recently copied while traveling in the Netherlands.  

François Flameng was the son of a printmaker. Besides painting, he was asked to design the first four-color French banknotes (1891).  Tsar Alexander III invited him to Russia to paint portraits of the royal family and other aristocrats.  He was commissioned to paint murals in theatres and restaurants.  And he served as an army artist during World War One, sketching scenes which would be painted once he returned home.  

Paul César Helleu worked in oil, pastels and drypoint etching.  Helleu befriended Sargent who was four years older—and already selling pictures by the time the two became friends.  Helleu had a difficult time finding buyers and considered giving-up art.  Sargent encouraged his friend to persevere, even buying a work from him with a one thousand franc note (worth about $20,000 today).  Eventually, Helleu's career did take off.  Amongst other things, Helleu won the design competition for the ceiling of New York's Grand Central Terminal: a teal zodiac starscape.  He also suggested that his friend, Coco Chanel, choose beige as her signature shade—the color of morning sand on the beach at Biarritz.  

Ralph Wormeley Curtis was born and raised in Boston.  After graduation from Harvard Law (where he co-founded The Harvard Lampoon), he moved to Paris to study art.  He soon befriended his distant cousin, John Singer Sargent, and the two became travel companions. While in the Netherlands, where they were studying the works of Frans Hals, Sargent captured his friend reclining on the beach at Scheveningen.  Curtis's wealthy family followed him to Europe, eventually buying the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice.  Curtis is best known for his Impressionist landscapes and Venetian cityscapes.

This painting is spontaneous and intimate—with a bold diagonal composition.  Quick and confident slashes of paint are a tip-of-the-hat to the Impressionist style.

Count Albert Gustavus de Belleroche was a Welsh-born painter and lithographer.  He was a friend of Sargent.  The two men appear to have been lovers and de Belleroche may have been the great love of John Singer Sargent's life.  They each painted the other—in portrayals that suggest great intimacy (far more than men of that period were accustomed to displaying with other men).  Their written correspondence confirms this intimacy.  Sargent painted this portrait of de Belleroche in 1883.

In 1885, England's Parliament passed the Labouchère Amendment which allowed the police to more easily arrest and prosecute gay men for "gross indecency."  Previously, sodomy had to be definitively proven in court (which was extremely difficult to do).  Though there were few convictions, the punishment was harsh: death (until 1861, after which time it became life imprisonment).  Under the new law, the punishment was reduced (to hard labor) but so was the level of proof required, resulting in more convictions.  This new law seems to have affected de Belleroche deeply.  From that point onwards, he married a woman and concentrated on portraying mostly women in his artwork.

When Sargent was commissioned to paint a portrait of Amalia Subercaseaux, in Venice in 1880, he struck-up a lifelong friendship with her husband, Chilean diplomat Ramón Subercaseaux. Ramón was an aspiring painter himself.  Shown above, a painting of Ramón by John Singer Sargent.  The two men sit in a Venetian gondola—each painting the other.  Sargent's mastery of capturing light and atmosphere is apparent in the diffused light coming through the striped curtain while light glances off the glassy water overboard.  We don't know if Subercaseaux's portrait of Sargent was ever completed.  It seems to be lost to time.