“Henry James” by John Singer Sargent

Henry James

John Singer Sargent

1913

Oil on canvas

33 1/2 in. x 26 1/2 in. (851 mm x 673 mm)

Courtesy of the National Gallery, London (NPG 1767)

Bequeathed by Henry James, 1916

According to the NPG site, “the American-born novelist Henry James settled in England, at Lamb House, Rye, in 1898. By the time this portrait was painted he was at the end of a career which had seen the success of early novels such as Portrait of a Lady (1881), followed by the late masterpieces The Wings of the Dove (1902) and The Golden Bowl (1904). This portrait was commissioned to celebrate James's seventieth birthday by a group of 269 subscribers organised by the American novelist Edith Wharton, although ultimately Sargent, a fellow American and friend, waived his fee. When it was completed James pronounced the portrait to be 'a living breathing likeness and a masterpiece of painting.'”

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Sargent’s late portraits by Elaine Kilmurray

Around 1907, he attempted to give up both formal portraiture and the fashionable society that generated it. He shifted his emphasis to landscape and produced huge numbers of works in oil and watercolor: a series of Alpine figure studies, architectural paintings of parks and gardens, fountains and statues, scenes of local life, boats and animals, streams and waterfalls, rocks and boulders—with only a few of them ever exhibited or sold. He returned to Venice, the city he loved above all others, year after year, painting canals, palace facades and campos from different angles and under varying conditions of light. He was committed to his mural decorations and landscapes, but the claims of portraiture never entirely evaporated. He compromised by drawing charcoal portraits—he did between twenty and thirty a year—in the space of a sitting or two; and he painted portraits of close friends like Sybil Sassoon and Henry James.

Elaine Kilmurray is author (with Richard Ormond) of John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) as quoted on the website of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Last modified 25 May 2016