In 2022, the heirs of John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) made a major donation spread across seven museums in the U.S. and the U.K. These works were not by the famed Gilded Age society portraitist, but his younger sister Emily Sargent (1857–1936)—an accomplished artist in her own right, being recognized for the first time.
Now, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is hosting “Emily Sargent: Portrait of a Family,” its first show of the watercolor paintings it received in that gift. Emily’s works were actually lost for decades, until some of her relatives found a forgotten trunk in storage containing hundreds of her paintings.
“There’s a sense of discovery seeing them,” Stephanie L. Herdrich, the Met’s curator of American painting and drawing, told me. “We’re just starting to understand more about how she worked.”
The exhibition at the Met is one of the first opportunities for museumgoers to see these newly rediscovered works, which showcase Emily’s experiments with different painting techniques as she developed her own personal style.
Emily Sargent, (ca. 1900–10). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
There was a small Emily Sargent exhibition at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester in 2022, an expanded version of which appeared at the nearby Sargent House, the family’s ancestral home, the following year. And the Met included a couple of Emily’s works in last year’s “A Decade on Paper: Recent Acquisitions, 2014–2024.” But the new show shines a spotlight on her watercolors like never before.
“They’re in amazing condition. If they were ever shown, they were maybe hung in private homes, but to our knowledge they were never exhibited,” Herdrich said.
Emily Sargent, (1903). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
To preserve the delicate works, the museum will rotate in new pieces about halfway through the show’s run. Altogether, the exhibition will showcase about 20 of the 26 paintings by Emily in the donation.
The show complements the museum’s current blockbuster, “Sargent and Paris,” about John’s years making a name for himself as a young artist in the French capital, and the creation of his famed masterpiece .
Emily Sargent, (1902). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
The Met actually already had some watercolors in the collection that it now believes are by Emily’s hand. They were part of a large donation of works on paper in 1950 that also included a sketchbook by the siblings’ mother, Mary Newbold Sargent (née Singer), which is also on view in the new show.
Since the family’s gift, scholars have begun researching more about Emily, a previously overlooked figure in the annals of art history.
John Singer Sargent, (1903). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of Francis Ormond, 1950.
“I basically knew nothing about her,” Herdrich admitted. “There’s archival material and some letters from her at the collection of the MFA Boston, which are being catalogued and transcribed. But so much of what we know about her is still shaped by what we know about her brother. So I think letting her works be seen is a good start.”
In comparing the family trove of Emily’s works to its existing holdings of her brother’s work, the Met was excited to discover that the two had sometimes even painted the same scenes. As part of the Emily Sargent gift, the museum was able to select some pieces that matched examples of John’s work it already owned, as well as a watercolor that the two created together in northern Italy, titled .
Emily Sargent and John Singer Sargent, (1906–08). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
Though the Sargent children were American, they were born in Europe, and were adults the first time they set foot in the U.S. Neither Emily nor John ever married, and the two traveled extensively, often together, documenting their travels in their art.
While Mary insisted on drawing lessons for all of her children, only John got a formal art education. Emily, who suffered her entire life from the effects of an childhood spinal injury, only began painting in earnest in her 30s.
Emily Sargent, (1929). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
The exhibition features her architectural studies and landscapes, some of which border on abstraction. Emily’s talents are obvious, which makes the contrast with her brother’s remarkable career, as the great portraitist of the age, all the more dramatic.
It’s bittersweet to imagine what Emily could have achieved, and the heights she could have reached, had she had the same opportunities afforded to John. But this show gives a glimpse into her talent, finally scratching the surface of the lesser-known Sargent.
Emily Sargent, (1908). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
“There’s still so much to learn about her,” Herdrich said. “We just wanted to get her works out there and bring her to the fore—let people get to know her.”
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
