John Singer Sargent as Choreographer, even with alligators

John Singer Sargent was an American artist famed for his: oil portraiture, his watercolors, and his massive oil-painted murals.

Surprised that he was a muralist? Most people are.

Sargent was born in Florence, Italy, and lived most of his life in England or moving around Europe creating art. Born of American parents, he considered himself American and traveled many times to the US to visit his favorite spots.

In order to appreciate John Singer Sargent as a choreographer, you need to be introduced to his murals in all their splendor.

One installation of multiple separate scenes was dedicated to the “Triumph of Religion” and were installed at the Boston Public Library.

The largest installation of his murals include dramatic scenes celebrating the arts through classic, pagan, and Greek heroes. They were installed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in the rotunda at the Huntington Avenue entrance.

The last paragraph of this description above subtly, but unfortunately, minimizes examination of Sargent's murals by summarizing his inspirations as a "variety of ancient and Renaissance source."

Jane Dini in “The Artist as Choreographer: Sargent's Murals at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,” 2002, presents the argument that Sargent’s figures in his murals were actually strongly rooted and inspired from his love of the ballet. (American Art, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 11-29.)

For example, his frequent visits to the ballet allowed him to home in on the most revolutionary dances and choreography of the era. I am no expert in ballet, but in the first quarter of the twentieth century, the style of dancing was changing from the traditional interpretation of a dance, such as Swan Lake, into what was considered at the time, wildly exuberant and frankly, a performance of almost naked (especially male) dancers cavorting across a stage. It was the beginning of “Modern Dance.“

Sargent used many models (clothed and nude), but his visits to the ballet allowed him to view the highest mastery of muscular strength intertwined with a graceful control of movement. And, as a bonus, it was connected to music: one of his passions.

Although this next seems unrelated, it underscores why Sargent was not credited for his modern influences in art after about 1915. Sargent was the recipient of bad reviews by some art critics. Especially Roger Fry who didn’t like Sargent’s work and railed against him. I think it’s partly because Sargent was not a fan of Post-Impressionism. Fry named Post-Impressionism as art form, so obviously he was invested in recommending those who supported it.

And, Roger Fry was very powerful. Art historian Kenneth Clark described Fry as "incomparably the greatest influence on taste since Ruskin ... In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry."

Fry pronounced Sargent old fashioned and out of touch. Fry championed the new, "modern" painters such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat – the Post-Impressionists.

The effect of this critic panning Sargent’s work negatively affected his standing for the last years of his life and for nearly half a century after his death in 1925. It blinded many critics, museums, and collectors into ignoring his work as irrelevant in the modern era.

Sargent being called old fashioned resulted in him not getting credit for his incorporation of the edgy modern dance influences of the time. His interpretations of the human body with a graceful, soaring physique was not appreciated by critics until the 21st Century. Jane Dini is one of the first in 2002 to write about his work built on the ballet-like motions of his figures in his murals, drawings, and his paintings.

For example, using one of his favorite models in Boston, Thomas McKeller, Sargent stretched McKeller’s torso, twisted his arm, and re-created him through the lens of ballet observations. Then Sargent morphed him into some of the figures in his Boston murals at the MFA. Look a the dancers in "Apollo..." and you can see the grace and strength of Thomas McKeller. (McKeller was a frequent model by Sargent. Here is a story of their relationship.)

Myself, as an artist and a person who has studied the art of drawing my whole life, sees that throughout his whole life, Sargent displayed his acumen and genius with the human form.

Even in these alligators we see a sort of grace of movement and choreographed arrangement of forms on the "stage."

Some of the underlying grace in Sargent’s work is his innate talents of observation, his love of dance and his implied awe of the human body. Instead of dance choreography, it is visual choreography.