Art & Exhibitions

Major works by Leonardo da Vinci will be brought to life in a new exhibition at Melbourne’s THE LUME exhibition space. As part of the show “Leonardo da Vinci—500 Years of Genius,” pages from the artist’s priceless Codex Atlanticus will be on display for the first time ever in Australia.
The book is a 12-volume set of drawings and writings made by Leonardo, gathered together in the late 16th century by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni. Pages from the codex come to Melbourne after Bruce Peterson—THE LUME’s founder and owner of Rome’s Museo Leonardo da Vinci—spent a decade building a relationship with Milan’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana, where the pages have been stored since 1637.
Parts of the codex have previously been displayed in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Paris’s Louvre, but have never been shown in Australia before. The precious artifacts are released from Milan for a three-month period, after which time they must be returned to Italy to recover from their exposure to light.
Codex Atlanticus pages. Image courtesy of THE LUME.
Peterson said that the pages “represent not just a collection of sketches and writings but a gateway into the brilliance of Leonardo da Vinci’s mind”, and that “their arrival in Australia is profound, allowing visitors to explore Leonardo in a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
Also included in the exhibition are to-scale inventions inspired by the pages of the codices; the only exact 360° replica of Mona Lisa in the world; a V.R. set-up allowing users to fly virtually over the streets of Florence’ and a Renaissance-themed bar called ‘Caffé Medici’. Other activities scheduled to accompany the exhibition are pilates and yoga sessions, sound baths, and an Italian long-table dinner by chef Guy Grossi, on the evening before the show opens to the public, priced at AUD $296 ($193). The venture has been entirely privately funded.
“Leonardo da Vinci—500 Years of Genius” Installation View. Image courtesy of THE LUME.
Melbournes’s THE LUME opened on November 1, 2021, inside the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. It is the world’s largest permanent immersive digital art and cultural venue. It offers a 3,000-square-meter multi-sensory gallery, using A.I. and V.R. interactive technologies to project artworks and immerse visitors in their shows. Previous displays include a deep-dive into the works of Monet and the Impressionists, Vincent Van Gogh, and a showcase of more than 110 First Peoples’ art and music in THE LUME’s most recent exhibition “Connection”. The Leonardo show has been created by the immersive arts and culture company Grand Experiences and is presented in collaboration with Webuild, an Italian construction and civil engineering group.
“Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius” is on at THE LUME, Melbourne, from March 16, 2024. More information and ticket availability can be found on THE LUME website.
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Nadya Tolokonnikova, a cofounder of the anarchic feminist art collective Pussy Riot, has announced her first museum show at the OK Linz Center for Contemporary Art in Austria. “Rage” will spotlight the group’s most recent protest pieces that confront patriarchal and religious repression and Vladimir Putin’s aggressive regime.
A highlight of the exhibition will be the presentation a video work that was released shortly after the arrest of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2021. It called for his freedom and the release of all political prisoners in Russia, but filming of the work was interrupted by the authorities and its participants were arrested for “propaganda of homosexuality.” The video has gained new poignance following the recent news of Navalny’s death in a Russian prison.
“Most of my life, even after two years of imprisonment, I chose to stay in Russia, even though I had plenty of opportunities to immigrate,” Tolokonnikova said. “I tried to change Russia, make it a country that I would be proud of—peaceful, prosperous, friendly, democratic, loving.”
Instead, Tolokonnikova said she watched her “friends being murdered and revolutions suffocating under Putin’s boot,” something many fear in the wake of Navalny’s death. 
Pussy Riot cover of Time Magazine from 2012. Image courtesy of OK Linz.

“The most radical act of rebellion today is to relearn how to dream and to fight for that dream,” she added.
The OK Linz exhibition will spotlight many of the activitist actions led by Pussy Riot over the years. At the center is Tolokonnikova’s 2022 performance Putin’s Ashes in which she burned a portrait of Putin, collecting the ashes in small bottles with 12 women from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia who had also experienced repression and aggression at the hands of the Russian president.
An outspoken activist, Tolokonnikova grew up in a remote Arctic town in Siberia but turned to performance art upon moving to Moscow in 2007. Four years later, she co-founded Pussy Riot and the group began staging illicit live performances, eventually getting arrested and sentenced to two years in a labor camp for performing the anti-Putin anthem “Punk Prayer” in a Moscow cathedral.
Reflecting on her 17 years of protest performance art for the OK Linz show, Tolokonnikova recalled a mix of “camaraderie, harassment, arrests,” as well as great pain.
Cover for Pussy Riot’s Matriarchy Now mixtape from 2022. Photo: Ksti Hu, courtesy of OK Linz.
As well as creating site-specific actions, Pussy Riot have also produced sculpture and installation works, including self-referential sex dolls dressed up in the group’s signature pink balaclavas. Pick Your Poison, a group of gaudily colored but enticing candy machines that will also be on view in the exhibition, makes sardonic reference to Putin’s penchant for poisoning his opponents.
Though Tolokonnikova has left Russia, doing museum shows in the West does not come consequence-free. The 2022 show “Putin’s Ashes,” which opened at Jeffrey Deitch’s L.A. gallery before traveling to venues in Sante Fe and Dallas, landed her on Russia’s federal wanted list. This time, she was being charged with disrespecting Christian imagery for peddling an NFT in which the Virgin Mary appears in the form of a vulva. The activist has a been categorized as a “foreign agent” by Russia since 2021.
Curated by Michaela Seiser and Julia Staudach, “Rage” will open at the OK Linz in June 2024.
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A new show in London unveils never-before-seen photos of rock superstars the Rolling Stones, taken by an official photographer to the band and hidden away in an attic for decades. “The Rolling Stones – Elegantly Wasted,” at London’s J/M Gallery, showcases snaps by Tony Sanchez—known affectionately as Spanish Tony—who worked as guitarist Keith Richards’ assistant for eight years, sticking close to the band throughout the ’60s and ’70s, including during their time in self-imposed exile in the South of France, when they fled the Labour government’s 93 percent tax on high earners.
Sanchez met the band via the art dealer Robert Fraser, and became one of two official photographers for the 1969 Stones in the Park festival along with Michael Cooper, documenting the band throughout their rise to fame. In 1979 the photographer released a memoir about his time with the band—Up and Down With the Rolling Stones: My Rollercoaster Ride with Keith Richards—which featured a selection of photographs he had taken over the last two decades, along with anecdotes of drug taking, international flights, and nights out with the Beatles.
Tony Sanchez, Onstage at The Rock and Roll Circus (1968). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
After Sanchez’s death in 2000, his collection of photographs went by inheritance to his son Steve, whose sons Nick and Matt later went searching in Steve’s attic for the photos. The treasure trove they found includes images of wild parties, iconic performances, and behind-the-scenes views of famous magazine photo shoots, as well as more intimate portraits.
The Rolling Stones formed in London in 1962, with original members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (who had met at five years old in primary school in Dartford), Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts. Over the band’s seven-decade career, they have sold over 200 million records. The opening of “Elegantly Wasted” falls between the recent release of the band’s 31st studio album, Hackney Diamonds (their first since the 2021 death of drummer Watts) and the start of their 18-date American tour on April 28.
J/M Gallery have called the photos “the most idiosyncratic shots of the band a collector could hope for” from a photographer with “unprecedented access.” The show has been created in partnership with Bayliss Rare Books, with owner and founder Oliver Bayliss saying that he “couldn’t be happier to be involved in this project. I spent months trawling through Tony’s archive—thousands of negatives and contact sheets—and am blown away by Tony’s unique eye and the quality of these images.” Limited edition prints produced by Bayliss Rare Books of photographs included in the exhibition are also available online.
“Elegantly Wasted” is on view at J/M Gallery, 230 Portobello Road, W11 1LJ, until March 5.
Tony Sanchez, Keith Richards, Olympic Studios (1969). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
Tony Sanchez, The Lost Boys – Beggars Banquet album cover shoot, Swarkestone Pavillion (1968). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
Tony Sanchez, Keith Richards and his motorbike, Redlands (early 1970s). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
Tony Sanchez, Mick and Keith Backstage, USA (early 70s). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
Tony Sanchez, The Glimmer Twins onstage (1970s). Courtesy of Spanish Tony Media and Bayliss Rare Books.
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A rare watercolor illustration from The Jungle Book, painted by a pair of precocious siblings, is now on display at Rudyard Kipling’s family home, 130 years after the publication of his timeless story.
The painting depicts a post-climactic scene: Rama, the great bull, overlooks a plain where the body of the villainous tiger Shere Khan lies, trampled to death by a stampede of buffalo led by the tale’s young protagonist, Mowgli.
The Return of the Buffalo Herd is one of four watercolors remaining from an original set of 16 painted by the Detmold brothers at the turn of the 20th century. Edward Julis Detmold, who signed the painting with his monogram “EJD”, and his twin brother Charles “Maurice” Detmold were prolific book illustrators of the time. Born in 1883, they began their prodigious art careers in their early teens. At the age of 13, they were the youngest people to exhibit watercolors at the Royal Academy. They were only 18 years old when they were commissioned to illustrate The Jungle Book.
Sadly, the twins lived troubled personal lives. Maurice died by suicide at 25 years old. He left a note which read “This is not the end of a life. I have expressed through my physical means all that they are capable of expressing, and I am about to lay them aside.” Edward followed a similar path almost 50 years later when, depressed after losing sight in one eye, he too died by suicide.

A sketch of Edward Julius Detmold by his brother Maurice. Photo: National Portrait Gallery London
The painting is being displayed at Bateman’s, Kipling’s home in Burwash, Sussex, now owned by the National Trust. Speaking on the artwork, Hannah Miles, Collections and House Manager at Bateman’s, said, “comparisons could be drawn between the Detmold twins and Mowgli, who in the original story of The Jungle Book was a rather troubled character trapped between two worlds.”
“It feels poignant therefore to display their magnificent illustration alongside a copy of the book featuring all of the twins’ original pictures, in the place that meant so much to the story’s author Rudyard Kipling.”

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Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum is pairing its namesake with a latter-day expressionist artist who named the Dutch painter as a principal inspiration. “Matthew Wong | Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort” will be the largest show yet of the beloved Chinese-Canadian artist’s work in Europe, according to the museum. Speaking to Artnet News at the time of Wong’s death, his friend, artist Jonas Wood, even called Wong (1984-2019) “the modern day Van Gogh.” 
“I see a sincerity, a conviction and total commitment in Wong’s work that you also see with Van Gogh,” said Joost van der Hoeven, curator of the exhibition and a researcher at the museum. “They are unparalleled in their ability to combine emotional depth with a highly accessible visual language.”
The two artist’s canvases are similarly soulful, vividly colored, and expressionistic; both made extensive use of impasto. Self-taught as a painter, Wong took up the medium after studying photography, and also named artists like Gustav Klimt and Henri Matisse as touchstones.
Besides the similarities in their work, the artists also share a tragic commonality: Van Gogh died at 37, Wong at 35. When it comes to the market, the artists diverge dramatically. Wong found success during his lifetime, with New York gallery Karma displaying his work; shortly after his death, New York Times critic Roberta Smith lauded him as “one of the most talented painters of his generation”; and his market rocketed to surreal heights shortly after his death, as Eileen Kinsella reported in October 2020, when a Wong painting that went on the block at Christie’s with a high estimate of $700,000 fetched some $4.47 million.
Van Gogh, meanwhile, sold only one known painting during his life, and even posthumous success came slowly. 
“When I saw Wong’s work for the first time, it gripped me instantly, and I saw in it a whole range of art historical references,” said Van der Hoeven. And yet it remains completely original and contemporary. I am fascinated by this tension between recognition and originality, and that is what inspired me to make this exhibition.”
If you can’t make it to Amsterdam (or if tickets sell out), there’s also a catalogue featuring contributions by Artnet contributor Kenny Schachter, Richard Shiff, Sofia Silva, and John Yau.
“Matthew Wong | Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort” will be on view at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, from March 1 to September 1, 2024. See more images from the exhibition below.
Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with a Reaper, 1889. Courtesy Van Gogh Museum.
Matthew Wong, See You on the Other Side, 2019, © 2023 Matthew Wong Foundation / c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2023.
Matthew Wong, Unknown Pleasures, 2019, Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2023 Matthew Wong Foundation / Pictoright Amsterdam, 2023. Digital image courtesy of MoMA
Matthew Wong, Coming of Age Landscape, 2018. Matthew Wong Foundation / © Matthew Wong Foundation c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2023.
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A forthcoming exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is making the case that music is as much a sonic experience as it is a visual one. 
“Art of Noise” will gather a staggering 800 art and design objects that have enhanced and vivified the experience of music over the past century. They range from product to graphic design, and span ages, but all of them have enhanced our relationship to music. Or, as curator Joseph Becker told me over a video call: “The artifacts that accompany the music lend presence to the music itself.”
When it came to building the exhibition, Becker was spoilt for choice. Most of the works on view emerge from SFMOMA’s permanent collection, which include such highlights as record sleeves, ads, and flyers from the Bay Area’s psychedelic rock heyday. In particular, the museum holds the complete collection of rock posters printed by legendary promoters Bill Graham and Family Dog Productions during the 1960s and ’70s. All 460 of them are going on view as a set for the first time. 
Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures poster (1979), designed by Factory Records after Peter Saville. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase through a gift of Jenny Emerson and Accessions Committee Fund; © Peter Saville; photo: Tenari Tuatagaloa
Also given an outing are works designed by the likes of Milton Glaser, best known for his 1966 poster of a fiery-haired Bob Dylan; Emmet McBain, who left his primary-colored imprint on jazz records; and Victor Moscoso, designer of the 1960s’ trippiest posters. 
The show’s focus on music’s aesthetics stretches to encompass product and industrial design as well, namely the technology that’s made music playback possible. The gadgets arrayed here will trace a century’s worth of design and engineering evolutions from early phonographs to boomboxes and stereos to iPods. Sculptures by artists Ron Arad and Tom Sachs also feature. These devices, said Becker, “have allowed us to have different relationships to music.” 
Ron Arad, Concrete Stereo (1983). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee fund purchase; © Ron Arad Associates.
The curator is especially jazzed about interactive installations dotted throughout “Art of Noise.” One work by Teenage Engineering, titled Choir, will feature wooden figurines programmed to “sing” in various music genres in different tonal ranges. Another work, by celebrated engineer Devon Turnbull, will take over a gallery with giant custom speakers that will play a selection of rarities and master recordings in devastatingly high fidelity. For those conditioned to the playback quality of AirPods, Turnbull’s immersive installation promises “an awakening experience,” Becker said. 
Yuri Suzuki’s commission, Arborhythm, offers a similar listening experience outdoors, where visitors can recline amid tree-like sculptures. “The natural and urban sounds are remixed into this wellness soundtrack,” Becker explained. “It gets a little bit like a sound bath, a sonic conditioner.”
Teenage Engineering, Choir (2022). © teenage engineering.
The show will be rounded off by SFMOMA’s latest acquisitions, including a 1965 Brionvega RR126 stereo system, designed by Achille and Piergiacomo Castiglioni, as well as the DJ deck custom-designed by Teenage Engineering for Virgil Abloh’s set at Coachella in 2019. 
“This has been such a wonderful project to work on,” Becker reflected. “There are so many different access points to music because it’s so deeply ingrained in cross-cultural experiences. I think music just touches people in a way that is similar to art, but also in a way that is more universal.” 
See more images from the exhibition below.
Jason Munn, School of Seven Bells / Black Moth Super Rainbow (2010). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Jason Munn, © Jason Munn; photo: Don Ross.
Achille and Piergiacomo Castiglioni, RR126 Stereo System, manufactured by Brionvega (1965). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Michael D. Abrams; photo: Don Ross.
Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot, Braun SK-4 (1956). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; © Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot; photo: Katherine Du Tiel.
Lee Conklin, Canned Heat and Gordon Lightfoot at the Fillmore West, October 3–5, 1968 (1968). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Jim Chanin; © Wolfgang’s Vault; photo: Don Ross.
Bonnie MacLean, The Yardbirds and The Doors at the Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, July 25–30, 1967 (1967). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Jim Chanin; © Wolfgang’s Vault; photo: Don Ross
Teenage Engineering, Virgil Abloh DJ deck (2019). © teenage engineering; photo: Pelle Bergström, Skarp Agent.
Tom Sachs, Model Thirty-Six (2014). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase through a gift of the FOG Forum; © Tom Sachs.
David Singer, Grateful Dead and Taj Mahal at the Fillmore West, February 5–8, 1970 (1970). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Jim Chanin; © Wolfgang’s Vault; photo: Don Ross.
Mathieu Lehanneur, Power of Love (2009). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee fund purchase; © Mathieu Lehanneur; photo: Don Ross.
“Art of Noise” is on view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St, San Francisco, May 4 through August 18. 
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Campina de Cima, the rock salt mine underneath the city of Loulé in Portugal, provides salt mostly for animal feed and de-icing the roads. However, for the last five years it has also been the only salt mine in the country to open to the public for guided tours of its 25 miles of tunnels.
It has recently taken on a new role as an exhibition space, which was inaugurated on February 17 with  ‘Ocean: Sea is Life’, an exhibition by artists from the Portuguese David Melgueiro Association which campaigns for ocean clean-ups. Its website states that the association’s purpose is “to provide operational and logistical support for scientific and technical activities, aimed at preserving the marine environment”.
The mine’s salt galleries lie around 754 feet beneath the city of Loulé and almost 100 feet below sea level, making them Portugal’s deepest tourist site. The salt itself is approximately 230-million-years-old.
Mining activities continue alongside guided tours, which explore the machinery used and the life of Saint Barbara. Legend says that martyr lived in the 4th century and was hidden from sight by her pagan father due to her great beauty. He eventually beheaded her when she converted to Christianity.
Barbara is the patron saint of miners, as well as those in other dangerous careers such as artillerymen and military engineers. There is a tradition in the tunnelling industry of setting up a shrine to the saint underground, to bring protection upon the workers. “Saint Barbara, Patron Saint of Miners and Other Arts” is a permanent exhibition at the Campina de Cima, which also boasts one of the world’s largest collections of object relating to the saint.
Saint Barbara statuette in Campina de Cima mine. Image via My Guide Algarve.
The saint was also the subject of the first-ever art exhibition to be held at the mine, back in 2022. It featured the works of German painter Klaus Zylla, who began focusing on her story during an artist residency in the Algarve.
These various artistic initiatives were put in place by the management company TechSalt SA with the hopes that the mine could become jewel in the crown of the Algarvensis Geopark, which has aspirations to become a UNESCO site. Their website lists TechSalt SA’s mission “to explore and commercialize the rock salt mineral resource at the Campina de Cima mine,” adding that they “want to reuse the mining space in an innovative way, contributing to the dissemination and promotion of Earth Scheinces, Mining Industry, and Art.”

‘Ocean: Sea is Life” closes at the end of April, and tickets to visit the mine are available through TechSalt’s website.
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Endless rooms of 19th-century portraits might not sound like an immediately exciting prospect, even if they were the socialites, celebrities, and statesmen of their day. As soon as the name John Singer Sargent is mentioned, however, the exhibition is sure to be a blockbuster hit. The American painter’s widespread appeal has hardly been diminished since the days when the most fashionable members of society’s upper crust were vying to be immortalized by his brush.
Like an antidote to the avant-garde, Sargent’s paintings have a timeless charm owed to his uncanny ability to bring subjects to life on canvas. The latest survey of his work, “Sargent and Fashion,” has just opened at Tate Britain in London after a successful run at the MFA Boston. Walking through the galleries, one feels almost like they are stepping into a century-old conversation between fully sentient figures.
Faces full of character aside, Sargent’s subjects stand out for his richly resplendent renderings of their dress. Over the course of a lifetime, Sargent’s other interests inevitably shifted but his love of fashion and texture would remain a constant. Highlighting this pivotal part of his practice, the exhibition reunites the portraits with the original clothes worn or, in some cases, items of a similar type. Examples include the bright yellow dress donned by Spanish dancer La Carmencita and the magnificent black opera cloak worn by Lady Sassoon.
Installation view of “Sargent and Fashion” at Tate Britain showing La Carmencita (c. 1890). Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
“One thing that is striking to anyone that looks at his work is just how much he’s interested in the clothes,” said the show’s curator James Finch. “He’s evidently in love with the textures of clothing. The exhibition allows viewers to see what Sargent is doing in the process of painting: the details that he picks out, the things that he elides, and the process of transformation that is taking place.”
Though some critics have struggled to understand the crucial role that fashion plays in constructing identity, its significance was obvious to Sargent and many of his sitters. It is well known that he kept a repertoire of props for this purpose and made careful but often surprising adjustments to each sitter’s costume as he saw fit.
“We have enough evidence to give a clear sense that Sargent was very interventionist,” said Finch. “There was a class of patron who sought out this unexpected quality in the portrait and who left themselves open to working with an artist who would push back. If you knew exactly how you wanted to be depicted, you probably wouldn’t go to Sargent.”
“He wasn’t an artist that relied on preparatory drawings,” Finch added, “but really worked his ideas out on the canvas. He never really smoothed out those edges even when he was extremely in demand. Every portrait was still an experiment on some level.”
Artnet News asked Finch to pick out five portraits from the exhibition that exemplify Sargent’s meticulous fashioning of identity through dress.

Lady Helen Vincent
John Singer Sargent, Lady Helen Vincent, Viscountess d’Abernon (1904). Photo: Sean Pathasema, courtesy of Birmingham Museum of Art.
Sargent’s tendency to toy around with the details is apparent in his portrait of Lady Helen Vincent, a diarist and celebrated socialite who also worked as a nurse anaesthetist during World War I. Sargent painted her while she was staying in Venice just a few years before he would swear off portraits in 1907. Though Lady Helen was in fact wearing a white dress during their sessions, Sargent decided to change the color to black halfway through to produce a more immediately striking effect. Reflecting on this last minute swap, Sargent quipped that he was both a “painter and a dressmaker.”
“He would tailor what the sitter was wearing and make it look quite different,” said Finch. “Rather than simply documenting the latest styles he found a way to make them conform to his vision.”

Ellen Terry
Installation view of “Sargent and Fashion” at Tate Britain showing Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (c. 1889). Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.
When Sargent attended the opening night of Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the Lyceum Theatre in London in 1888, he was immediately moved to paint the actress Ellen Terry in the starring role of Lady Macbeth. She stood out on stage for her spectacular dress that was adorned with gold thread and 1,000 iridescent wings plucked from the green jewel beetle. When Terry described the dress to her daughter, she lamented that “the photographs give no idea of it at all, for it is in color that is so splendid.”
Luckily, Sargent wasted no time in asking to paint Terry. He had originally picked a pose that directly quoted the play but ended up having the star raise her arms over her head instead.
“The pose is devised to showcase the dress so that you really get a sense of how the sleeves and cloak fall in a very dramatic way,” said Finch. “Its a really extravagant outfit that shows the outsized personality of the performer.”
Surprisingly, Sargent also chose to make the dress more blue than it appears in real life on the advice of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones.

Samuel Jean Pozzi
John Singer Sargent, Dr. Pozzi at Home (1881). Photo: The Armand Hammer Collection.
The French surgeon Samuel Jean Pozzi was a glamorous man about town who befriended notable cultural figures like Marcel Proust and Sarah Bernhardt, and had numerous affairs, including with Virginie Gautreau, the subject of Sargent’s most notorious Portrait of Madame X (1884).
Pozzi’s more dapper side comes across in a black-and-white photo from the time, but Sargent made the bold choice to reimagine him in a totally different guise. Striking an elegant pose, Pozzi is shown wearing a statement red dressing gown and Turkish slippers in a disarmingly intimate domestic space.
“Its an almost transgressive way of depicting him that says so much about subverting ideas of masculinity at that time,” said Finch.

Lady Hammersley
John Singer Sargent, Mrs. Hugh Hammersley (1892). Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Douglass Campbell, in memory of Mrs. Richard E. Danielson, 1998.
The London hostess Mrs. Hammersley stands out against a decadent gold background for her cherry pink velvet gown. We know just how faithfully Sargent reproduced the color thanks to the swatch that Hammersley kept, which has since entered the the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection along with the painting.
“She clearly had such a strong sense of what it meant to sit for Sargent,” said Finch. “She was very interested in the arts and had a salon that was attended by Sargent, Walter Sickert, Augustus John, and other artists. She kept all her correspondence with Sargent and clearly had a sense of herself as her own archivist.”
The painting caused a stir when it was exhibited in 1893, with critics expressing discomfort at its ostentatious emphasis on dress. George Moore described the work as “the apotheosis of fashionable painting,” that would have as short a lifespan as any other trend. One day, he concluded, “many will turn with a shudder from its cold, material accomplishment.” Needless to say, it remains a widely admired portrait.

Eleanor O’Donnell Iselin
John Singer Sargent, Eleanora O’Donnell Iselin (Mrs. Adrian Iselin) (1888). Photo courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington.
When Eleanor O’Donnell Iselin first sat for Sargent, she must have known that he preferred an interventionist approach because she brought an array of exquisite dresses from Paris for him to choose from. Ever unpredictable, Sargent was immediately taken instead by the simple black day dress she had arrived in. According to at least one account, Iselin was disappointed by the artist’s choice, but we can only assume that he saw in the more austere outfit a fitting tribute to Iselin’s reportedly serious character.
“Its perhaps not what Iselin would have had in mind when she was first commissioning Sargent,” said Finch, but as always, “it would be a process of negotiation to reach the final outcome.”
“Sargent and Fashion” is on view at Tate Britain in London until July 7, 2024. 
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