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John Singer Sargent Painted Them. London Society Talked.
Jean Strouse’s brisk, wise “Family Romance” takes on the painter’s relationship to the Wertheimers, a vast Jewish clan he immortalized on canvas.
FAMILY ROMANCE: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers, by Jean Strouse
When London’s National Gallery exhibited nine portraits by John Singer Sargent in 1923, a magazine ran a cartoon of Rembrandt, Velázquez and other greats welcoming him. “Well done,” they say. “You’re the first master to break the rule and get in here alive.”
Sargent (1856-1925) really does seem the last old master. While his peers absorbed the upheavals of modernity, the American painter, who was born in Florence and spent most of his career in Paris and London, stuck to a decorous spirit of portraiture that hadn’t changed much since the 17th century: full-length poses, bottomless blacks, finery, a spotlighted realism that sought the essence of a gaze.
He painted presidents, magnates and eminent writers. So some brow-raising met the National’s acquisition of so many pictures of ascendant London Jews from a single clan. They are now the subject of “Family Romance,” Jean Strouse’s brisk, wise and admiring survey of an unusually long client relationship that signaled a tenuous shift in British society.
Samson Wertheimer came from Bavaria in 1839, and built a business dealing antiques and his own copies, especially the fashionable gilt bronze furnishings called ormolu. The royal warrant on Samson’s stationery was tangible proof of success; he dealt equally to other Jewish families.
Samson’s son Asher moved into art with acquisitions of Dutch masters. How Asher met Sargent is not known, but by 1898 Sargent had captured his client’s wife, Flora, drenched in lace and pearls, looking rich and a little weary. (She later requested a redo.) In the companion portrait, Asher stands with a thumb hooked into his vest and holding a cigar, his eyes knowing and bottom lip slightly moist.
