Women in late 19th century portraiture by Sargent and Whistler

¶ … Women are Portrayed in Late 19th Century Art

Throughout history, women have served as the subjects of compelling and poignant works of art, reflecting in large part how society viewed them and what roles they were expected to play. These gender differences were especially pronounced during the 19th century when women were women and men were men, and these differences can be readily discerned in the portraiture that emerged during this period. This paper provides an analysis of how women were portrayed in late 19th century art in general and in the paintings of women by John Singer Sargent and James Abbott McNeal Whistler in particular. An examination of how women are portrayed in paintings in general before the 19th century is provided, followed by a discussion of the history of portrait paintings (specifically women) of this time period. Brief biographies of John Singer Sargent and James Abbott McNeal Whistler are also provided, as well as a critical analysis of selected works by these artists. A summary of the research and salient findings are presented in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Portrayal of Women in Art Prior to the 19th Century. Perhaps as during no other period in history, the 19th century witnessed a profound transformation of how women were perceived in society in general and in works of art in particular. According to Kenner and Lorsch (1988), prior to the 19th century, women were largely excluded from the world of art altogether except as subjects of artworks and even here there were notable exceptions such as the use of male models by French painters. Indeed, "Women were only just beginning to claim turf in the world of painting in the 1700s," they advise, "although there were about 290 women artists in Europe in the eighteenth century and it was not entirely unheard of that a woman should try to make a living at painting. But the serious art world still remained very elitist and male-dominated. A woman asserting her professional ambition came face-to-face with a restrictive, hierarchical system, whose codified practices effectively marginalized her by refusing her access to certain types of experience and educational opportunity" (Keener and Lorsch 202). Likewise, in her essay, "The Social Construction and Deconstruction of the Female Model in 19th-Century France," Lathers (1999) reports that:

It would not be an exaggeration to assert that the 19th century invented the female model as an individual who could be classified and whose history could be written. From the 17th to the early 19th centuries, the official French Academy had hired only male models for the nude pose; the life drawing - also called an academie - was a practice exclusively reserved for the representation of the male body, and the conflation of the terms Academie (official governing body) and academie (official representation of the body) is indicative of this exclusivity" (23).

While artists of this period clearly used female nudes in their private studios even though the practice was prohibited by the Academy, the institutionalization of the specifically female nude represents a 19th-century phenomenon, as evinced by Candace Clements in her article on the Academy in the 18th century, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau in her study of the first thirty years of the 19th century (Lathers 23). According to this author, "although female models were still prohibited in almost all public art schools in 1850 and later, the 19th century is certainly the watershed era for the female model and the female academie" (emphasis added) (Lathers 24). Prior to this important transformation in gender perception, women were relegated to relatively minor roles in the art world. For example, "Gender and class played significant roles in determining the type of painter an artist could become. Only certain male students had the opportunity of following a program of formal education, involving several years of rigorous training, during which they studied anatomy and took life-drawing classes" (Keener and Lorsch 202). Women were not afforded the opportunity to receive this type of education in art because at the time, it was regarded as inappropriate that women should be in the presence of nude models; as a result, women were restricted to genres that did not require such thorough study of the human figure as did history painting, considered in eighteenth-century aesthetics as the noblest form of artistic expression, both because it placed man at the moral center of a painting and because it required such a strong classical education (Keener and Lorsch 202). According to these authors, "Those who lacked the necessary preparation were automatically excluded from achieving highest honors and were obliged, whatever their interests and ambitions might be, to devote themselves to the less important types of painting -- portraiture, landscape, still-life -- that is, those that were, according to the theory, derivative of 'mere' nature and deemed suitable to women's 'lesser talents'" (Keener and Lorsch 202).

Relegation to a specific genre, though, was certainly no guarantee of success. In fact, as one authority points out, "Most examples of self-portraiture by women are less vain than smug. Lavinia Fontana seated at a keyboard instrument in 1577 is a fine example of bad painting by a bad painter most celebrated for being a woman, the documentary banality of her work worthy of an English inn sign" ("Fabulous Faces" 37). Despite these constraints to their active participation in the world of art otherwise, women were considered increasingly important subjects of portraits in the case of family portraits for both aesthetic purposes as well as a way of creating a family tree and memorializing important milestones in a family's history - particularly if they could afford it. For instance, as Mann points out, "Portraiture was something of a national language in the 18th century, well and widely understood. Art, then as now, was a luxury good. The very act of having a portrait painted was a display of wealth and status, and portraits often sought to elevate their sitters further" (42).

In many cases, though, the portrayal of women in art before and during the early 18th century was characterized by fantasies of male supremacy and domination over women. In fact, Nochlin suggests that the men of the time believed that that they were naturally "entitled" to the bodies of certain women when they were involved as the subjects of art: "If the men were artists, it was assumed that they had more or less unlimited access to the bodies of the women who worked for them as models. In other words, [such] private fantasy did not exist in a vacuum, but in a particular social context which granted permission for as well as established the boundaries of certain kinds of behavior" (42). This point is echoed by Pointon (1997) who emphasizes that, "Representation is a process of empowerment and, although I do not argue that this form of production is exclusive to women, it is clear that it operates according to a highly gendered set of conventions" (48). This "gendered set of conventions" ultimately resulted in some sharp criticisms of artworks that stretched the moral envelope, though, but the 18th century appears to represent a heyday for the expression of women as desirable and attainable rather than dowdy and frumpy by any measure.

The social context in which these works of art were created was reinforced by how the artists themselves were viewed by the general public (e.g., men) and how these fantasies were a shared experience. For example, Likewise, Nochlin emphasizes that, "The fantasy of absolute possession of women's naked bodies -- a fantasy which for men of this time was partly based on specific practice in the institution of prostitution or, more specifically, in the case of artists, on the availability of studio models for sexual as well as professional services" (43-44). As Lathers (1996) points out, though, "The very heightened awareness of and attention paid to the female model in the 1880s, however, also paradoxically signaled her ultimate demise: once a 'model type' was established as such, she began to disappear. By the end of the century, the model's modesty is that of the mondaine, i.e., it is defined by a dance of dissimulation that identifies the female body as less a referent to be copied by the artist than the subject of a performance before which the painter and museum-goer are spectators. The woman herself is spectacle" (24). The term "spectacle" appears especially appropriate when applied to the portrayal of women in a wide range of media in a manner that lends a lurid quality to the while enterprise. For example, as Gundle (1999) points out:

It is striking that everywhere this curiosity was centred on women. In the pages of the American popular press, it was the wives - and especially the daughters - of the wealthy who were featured. Early in the century the beauty had emerged as a role to which women, especially of the upper classes, aspired. By the 1890s the popularity of the role had vastly expanded, and the coverage accorded the reigning New York beauty approached that given to public figures in politics or the arts. (269)

It would seem that the artists and the press of the era both recognized a hot commodity when they saw one, and in this pre-Internet/Cable/Hustler era, beautiful women portrayed in a lascivious fashion would naturally appeal to the prurient interests of the men of the day who might well have been personally fed up with the Victorian morals that controlled and dominated their lives otherwise. In this regard, Pyne (2006) reports that, "When scandalized critics attacked Rodin's nudes, Camera Work defended the drawings by a strategy of veiling the body with the soul, praising them as 'the perception of the mystery of surfaces.... The adventure of the mind in matter... The divinizing of the sensual and the materializing of the sensuous.' Stieglitz thus used a Whistlerian gloss of shadows and music to mystify the eroticism of Rodin's 'pagan' figures" (44).

The portrayal of women was even regarded as a measure of how well a society was doing in terms of progress and achievement. In fact, throughout the 18th century, discussions concerning commerce, liberty, and luxury all used women as a benchmark to communicate the relative health or degeneracy of the nation and required the idealization of the female subject as a means of representing the model state (see, for example, Figure 1 at Appendix a). According to Warner (1997), "When Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, commissioned Franz Xaver Winterhalter to paint the First of May, 1851 [see Figure 2], they wanted a family portrait that would also be an allegory of national pride and achievement" (16).

As Pointon (1997) points out, there was a widespread view that women were the gauges by which every aspect of contemporary society, its morals, its laws, its customs, its government, was measured:

Women's physical appearance was equally highly invested; while eighteenth-century letter-writers perpetually describe how people look, the legibility of faces being widely promoted, women's appearance was doubly significant for, in eighteenth-century England, to be beautiful is not only to possess an engaging physical presence, but also to be positioned in relation to a series of moral injunctions, which on the one hand raise and endorse women's public presence, while on the other hand damn the beautiful as a source of enervating femininity. (4)

The portrayal of women in art in general and portraits in particular also gained steam during the late 18th century because women were becoming more important economic players, albeit still inferior to their male counterparts from a legal perspective. During this period in history, women with money would naturally want to invest some of it in an artful representation of herself in the form of a well executed portrait, which would be handed down as prized family heirlooms in a manner that might not be readily appreciated by modern consumers today. For example, Pointon emphasizes that, "Women were also assessed as human beings within the economic system that was propelled by expenditure: discussions of dowries and marriage settlements became increasingly pressing as the range of goods and entertainments on which money could be spent increased. Imagery was instrumental in increasing the desire for goods and in promoting emulation. From an art-historical point-of-view, the issue of luxury thus becomes part of a question of the power of visual imagery and of its capacity to generate copies and imitations" (5).

Despite these shifts in how women were portrayed, for example, in commissioned portraits, there was still an undercurrent of sexism in how they were presented otherwise. These constraints to their active participation except as models and rich sponsors is evident in Pointon's observation that, "Artists and writers were part of public life. They were thinking citizens with moral responsibilities. Women were, for all the notoriety of the Blue Stocking circle, regarded as unthinking and economically unproductive. Just as women were becoming visible as readers and writers, as leading consumers of print culture, the literary (and one might also include the visual) culture was producing an increasingly restrictive model of femininity" (5).

There was a growing sense of intimacy in these portraits as well. According to Schnberger and Soehner (1960):

Perhaps the best way of apprehending the essence of 18th-century portraiture is to compare it with the ceremonious, bewigged portraits of the baroque era. The age of Louis XIV, the painters of Le Brun's generation, had created that type of picture, where the subject overawed beholders by the haughty, imperious gaze with which he looked down from the canvas, and seemed divided from them by his proud bearing, commanding gesture and splendid costume. In rococo portraiture this cleavage between spectator and sitter no longer exists (53).

Because France was looked to as the harbinger of all things great and wonderful in the world of art during this period, it is not surprising that their directions in portraiture would quickly spread throughout the Western world. In this regard, it would seem safe to suggest that what the French said was right and appropriate in the portrayal of women in art was in fact right and appropriate and worthy of emulation. This point is made by Schnberger and Soehner who point out that, "This new spirit in portrait painting is already evident in the work of the Regency period in France, after the death of Louis XIV, when fashionable society, led by Philippe d'Orleans, the Pegent was beginning to emerge from its torpor and to pursue new ideals. The court was enlivened by an infusion of elegance and wit from the drawing-rooms of Paris, which were already developing the special refinement of taste that was soon to be imitated by the aristocracy in every civilized country" (53).

In an early sign of the powerful effects of globalization, when the manners and customs of the French royal court were spread throughout Europe, the new style of portrait-painting went with them: "French painters were eagerly sought and greatly honoured guests in the princely residences of foreign countries, and artists from all over the continent came to Paris to perfect their own skill in the academies of art or in the studios of acknowledged masters. Social and artistic ambitions thus concurred to form a unified style of portraiture such as Europe had never known before" (Schnberger and Soehner 53). This trend was not without its detractors abroad, though. For instance, Warner (1997) emphasizes that, "To many older British painters, the spread of French technique appeared as an insidious disease afflicting the young. One objection was that it was un-British, not just in the literal sense but in going against the national character" (16). Regardless of who painted a portrait during this period in history, it is clear that what the subject wants is to be regarded as belonging to a society which regarded itself as a unity transcending all political or national frontiers, and that the painter's goal was to communicate to all who cared to look "a carelessly self-confident mien, perfect elegance, and great distinction of feature" (Schnberger and Soehner 53).

These affectations were not without an ultimate goal, and it is clear that portraitists knew what the public wanted and were ready and willing to respond because there was money to be made: "This cult of charm and beauty is inextricably bound up with the general increase of importance acquired by woman in the 18th century. During the baroque period women had still been hovering on the outskirts of social life, but in the age of rococo they moved into its very centre" (emphasis added) (Schnberger and Soehner 53). The portrayal of women in portraits during the 18th century was also a way for a society's leaders to highlight their progress and achievements for posterity, and the manner in which they attained these goals was to show women in a regal manner in a refined and sophisticated setting. For example, "This style of portrait-painting, invented for an aristocratic society with a monarch at its head, and giving fit expression to the high cultural standards and refined tastes of that society, its particular ideals, was to give the keynote of the art of portraiture that developed during the 18th century" (Schnberger and Soehner 54).

Not surprisingly, the upper-middle class did not want to be left out in the cold when it came to showing off their women in portraits, and they quickly followed suit: "The bourgeoisie, eager to be admitted to the fashionable salon and to establish social relations or even family connections with the nobility, strove to appear aristocratic in their portraits as well. The middle-class portrait achieved its own form of expression and took over all the mannerisms adopted in depicting those of higher rank, from dignified bearing to the craze for lapdogs" (Schnberger and Soehner 54). The portrayal of women in portraits during the 18th century was also viewed as a great social equalizer: "Established class distinctions were obliterated in such paintings; the banker's spouse had herself portrayed in exactly the same way as the wife of a hereditary Governor. Conclusive proof of this development is supplied by the self-portraits of 18th-century artists" (Schnberger and Soehner 54).

Early portraitists might not have enjoyed the luxury of PhotoShop, but they did know what the customer wanted and what the public expected when they portrayed women in their portraits: "Just as photos of celebrities have an appeal far beyond their friends and family, these 18th-century portraits were intended not merely to provide their owners with a good likeness of their nearest and dearest -- indeed, the portrait painter Henry-Pierre Danloux was able to say that he admired Romney 'despite the truly defective likeness of his models...' Portraits reflected and reinforced cultural values, reaffirming the different spheres occupied by the sitters. Men appear 'decided and grand'; women 'lovely'" (emphasis added) (Mann 42). Likewise, during this period, women acquired additional influence in politics, intellectual life and science, created the salons.".. with their refined and witty company, and made them the focal points of cultivated society, the 'bureaux d'esprit.' Woman's entry into this new sphere of importance is mirrored in the work of the portraitists. Feminine features tend to steal into the portraits of men, while art calls upon all its varied resources to deck woman's beauty in ever new charms, to enhance its brilliance and elevate it to the ideal of human perfection" (Schnberger and Soehner 54).

Clearly, then, portraits represented far more than just a pretty picture to the people of the 18th century, and this importance would carry over well throughout the 19th century as well, and these issues are discussed further below.

History of Portrait Painting in the 19th Century. As noted above, during an age where photography had not quite yet been invented (this would take place later in the century of course), portraits in the early 19th century still represented a viable way of recording milestones in a family's life and capturing visual snapshots of them as they grew and prospered. Like their late 18th century counterparts, portraits in general and portraits of women in particular remained highly popular among the elite and common folk alike. Indeed, as Pointon (2001) emphasizes, during this period in history, "Every well-off man of sensibility should have portraits of himself and his family at various stages of his life" (48). As a contemporary observer noted, "It is amazing how fond the English are of having their portraits drawn" (emphasis added) (quoted in Mann at 42). Given the importance of the medium during this period in history, it is not surprising that portraitists who could deliver the goods to the rich and powerful would be in high demand and afforded celebrity status that might not be completely understood today, and two such artists are discussed further below.

Biography of John Singer Sargent. John Singer Sargent was born in 1856, died in 1925, and is widely regarded as an artist of infinite talent the world over (Sartorious 2005:26). Sargent was also aware of where his next meal was coming from and actively sought out commissions from those who could afford his services. According to this author, "His ability to create flattering likenesses, and original compositions with freshlooking paint was surpassed by none. Sargent was eagerly sought after for his compelling portraits of European and American aristocrats" (Sartorious 26). Notwithstanding some downturns and controversies during his life, Sargent apparently enjoyed the company of a number of talented contemporaries and mentors that were highly influential in his style, but virtually everyone agrees that what Sargent ultimately developed was uniquely his own:

Sargent studied with Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran in Paris and absorbed on his own, through travel, the work of the Spanish painters Velazquez and Goya. He had personal associations with contemporary Impressionists such as Claude Monet. He absorbed all he was taught, and yet came up with a style of painting unmistakably his own. He was a gifted draughtsman, watercolorist and landscape artist. Still, he is best remembered for his portraits. His work is found in major museum collections around the world, and he is documented in numerous monographs. (Sartorious 26).

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Sargent's work is still well-known today, particularly in the English-speaking world; while the artist came to despise portrait painting, referring, exasperated, to his output on one occasion as "mugs and pautraights," he continues to be remembered for his prolific output (approximately 600 portraits of elegant ladies and grand gentlemen) (Gundle 269). According to this author, "It is not facile to describe him as the Henry James of art" (Gundle 269).

Other authorities place the artist's lifetime total of portraits closer to 800: "John Singer Sargent was one of the best-known and certainly one of the best-paid artists at the turn of the last century, but in the years following his death in 1925 his reputation went into a free fall. Part of the problem was that Sargent didn't paint like Picasso or Matisse and certainly not like Modrian, Kandinsky and other modern masters who dominated 20th-century art. Sargent by comparison was representational and old-fashioned, a judgment compounded by his embrace of that retrograde painterly endeavor: executing portraits of the rich and famous" (Goode 39). This point is also made by Foreman and his colleagues (1999) who report that, "If today there is no ruling class worth taking as seriously as Sargent took such aristocrats of his time, these pictures hint at a reason. Undoubtedly most of Sargent's patrons did in fact reproduce, in the literal sense -- the sense that doesn't matter very much. (Not all did: None of the Boit girls ever married.) They passed on their money and genes. They did not pass on the most valuable legacy once held by their ancestors: the confidence to rule, to set an example" (51).

An American expatriate who was born in Florence, Italy, Sargent was widely regarded as an erudite and sophisticated individual who presented an elegant figure. "He was undoubtedly a fashionable painter," Gundle notes, "whose services were constantly in demand. However, what he offered was not pure fashionableness, even though many of his portraits are vigorous and flattering. Rather his forte was incisive characterization combined with a calm, aristocratic languor" (269).

Moreover, Sargent ensured that he painted for his affluent patrons in a fashion that would communicate to the world both his own sophistication as an accomplished artist as well as the elegance of his portraiture subjects: "The overwhelming impression that transpires from his work is of a confident, relaxed ruling class content with its mastery of money, beauty, taste and power. Subjects are surrounded with an aura of wealth and ease that suggests nobility and tasteful refinement" (Gundle 269). This aura might have been marred, though, by his actual personae: "Tireless in his studio, Sargent did much but said little. A friend described him as a 'curiously inarticulate man, he used to splutter and gasp, almost growl with the strain of trying to express himself.' Looked at closely, his best pictures are more articulate than their creator" (Foreman et al. 51). Notwithstanding this personal criticisms, Sargent's works represented important social aspects of the late 19th century as they related to the portrayal of women in the world of art. "During the late 19th century,' Banta advises, the "nation's ideals at exactly the time when the arts were reflecting the physical changes which that racial type had undergone over the preceding decades. [Artists] feared that the symmetrical beauty of feature and the moral and physical vigor of body they prized most as an image would be lost in actuality through the random workings of events" (Banta 133-134). In addition, during the late 19th century, "There was growing concern over healthful diet, sensible clothing, and enlightened medical care. The young woman of statuesque bearing and strong limbs is as much a mark of the period as the examples visualized by Sargent" (Banta 135).

Sargent also eventually sallied into the field of Impressionism; however, these efforts have been met with some mixed results over the years. For instance, Danto suggests that he was completely out of his element by this time and argues that Sargent did not have a comprehensive understanding of what was required to excel in this medium: "His watercolors have the look of examples of how to do watercolors, and if one did not know them to be by Sargent, one would suppose them resurrected from the annual of some provincial watercolor society. It was a style of depositing wash on paper that others could and did acquire. I find his drawings equally dry, for all the certitude of touch and his perfect draughtsmanly control. In none of the work after 1884 do we sense any urgency of feeling or the presence of a soul" (Danto 679). By sharp contrast, Goode (1999) enthuses that, "Sargent also was a great watercolorist -- a medium he took up in earnest following his announcement in 1907 that he was abandoning portraiture (he was receiving $100,000 a painting... But he had done hundreds of them, 800 altogether by his life's end). And he was a sensuous painter: Works such as Two Girls in White Dresses (1909-11) [see Figure 3] play with fabric and other textures with a palpable lushness" (39).

It is hard to argue with success ($100,000 is still a lot of money), but this does not stop even his modern detractors from lamenting the differences in his style and content. For example, Danto reports from his perspective, "The elusive moment is that of the boundary between matter and art, perhaps between body and mind. But you can have that experience over and over in the work of Sargent. He really had the divine prerogative of lifting life out of paint with the turn of his amazing wrist, and it is, I think, a lost art. But there is none of the poetry that left the work after the fiasco with Madame Gautreau's portrait, and that is so palpable a substance in the Venetian interiors that you will want to return to them again and again. Except for the portraits, in the years after 1884 the work seems to me dry and flat" (Danto 679).

The "fiasco" with Madame Gautreau's portrait (Madame X) is discussed further below, but Foreman, King, Lejeune, and Prager suggest that Sargent forays into the loftier social realms was based on his ability to inculcate this perception amongst his clientele rather than as any particular hereditary function. According to these authors, "Did Sargent intend simply to make baronial types look fabulous? Nothing in his life story (1856-1925) illuminates his views of the high society to which he himself never belonged. The son of a peripatetic doctor from Philadelphia, he grew up in Italy, Switzerland, France, and Germany. After studying art in Paris, he began doing portraits of French aristocrats, but relocated to England after his portrait of Madame Gautreau (1884) scandalized the Paris Salon: A shoulder strap on her black gown had slipped provocatively off her right shoulder" (Foreman et al. 51).

Despite this "scandalous" portrayal (modest by modern standards), there was clearly also an element of jealousy involved in the assessment by his contemporaries. For example, as Goode points out, "Sargent's fellow students envied the ease with which the young artist mastered every skill required of the painter, but it was a talent he paid for dearly. His critics mistook Sargent's facility as shallowness and lack of seriousness, accusations that came to the fore after he died and his art was eclipsed by cubism, surrealism and the surfeit of 'isms' that followed" (39).

Key and salient highlights from Sargent's life and career as they pertain to his art provided in Table 1 below.

Table 1.

Key Highlights in the Life of John Singer Sargent.

Event/Description

1856 January 10

Born Casa Arretini, Florence, of American parents, Dr. Fitzwilliam Sargent and Mary Newbold Singer Sargent

His sister Emily born

Nice, Maison Virello

Pau, Biarritz, first trip to London, drew animals at Zoo, Paris

1868-69

Worked in studio of Carl Welsch in Rome; his mother encouraged his art

Traveled to Naples, Sorrento, Capri, Munich and Carlsbad

Attended school kept by M. Domenge in Florence

1870 February

His sister Violet (Mrs. Francis Ormond) born in Florence Student at Accademia delle Belle Arti

1874 February

Sargent went to Paris Family wanted him to enter Navy August Settled in Paris with family at 52 rue Abbratice; worked at Ecole des Beaux-Arts October Entered studio of Carolus Duran, a skillful portrait painter under Spanish influence

1876 May

First trip to United States, four months, Philadelphia Centennial, Newport, Chicago, Saratoga, Niagara, Quebec, Montreal October Paris

First Salon picture, Miss Watts

Oyster Gatherers of Cancale (En Route pour la Peche) second Salon picture, received Honorable Mention

Showed at Salon, Dans les Oliviers, Capri and portrait of Carolus Duran. Painted the two versions of Luxembourg Gardens Traveled in Spain

Morocco (first visit) Spain, Holland with Paul Helleu and Ralph Curtis

Studied Hals (Hals and Velazquez were most important influences)

Venice, studio in Palazzo Rezzonico

Salon, four portraits London, then 73 rue Notre Dame des Champs, Paris

Showed Mrs. Austen at Salon

Boit Children shown at Salon Rented Poirson house, 41 Boulevard Berthier, Paris

Mme. Gautreau at Salon, much criticized 41 Boulevard Berthier, Paris Moved to London, 13 Tite St., (later renumbered 31) had been Whistler's Vickers first English patrons November Broadway, Bournemouth, Robert Louis Stevenson portrait

Broadway, met Henry James who had long admired Sargent's work

Second Stevenson portrait

Founding of New English Art Club Broadway

Finished Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, shown at Royal Academy 1887

Died at age 74, Cheyne Walk

Like Sargent, Whistler was also clearly a world traveler; also like Sargent, Whistler would go on to ultimately enjoy enormous recognition and respect for his works around the world. To determine what all of the controversy was about in the works of these artists during the lives and thereafter, a critical analysis of selected works by Sargent and Whistler is provided below.

Analysis of Selected Works by Sargent and Whistler. As noted above, both Sargent and Whistler were the targets of criticism and the subjects of various controversies because of their portrayal of women in their art.

Table 3.

Selected Portraits by Sargent and Discussion.

Work

Discussion

Madame Gautreau's portrait (Madame X) (Figure 4), 1884.

In his essay on the artist, Danto (1986) reports that Sargent's famous portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau (Madame X) created an enormous controversy when it was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1884, an event that had a profound effect on his career: "The brilliant society portraits with which he will be eternally associated came after that, when he removed himself from France and set up as a sort of superficial Impressionist in England. Up to that critical moment he was a child of fortune but a very deep painter indeed, and on the basis of what he achieved in the early 1880s he might have gone on to be very great as well" (679). According to Sartorious, "Sargent's most famous portrait is that of an American socialite living in Paris, Madame Gautreau, better known as Madame X. Sargent created more studies and spent more time on this portrait than any other. The portrait caused a scandal in Paris society because of the sitter's haughty, distant expression and because Sargent painted her dress strap slipping off her right shoulder, an indication at the time of shocking impropriety. In response to the vehement reaction of his client and her associates, Sargent removed the painting from exhibition, re-painted the shoulder strap, and kept the work in his studio until it was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art" (27).

Miss Elsie Palmer" (c. 1884) (Figure 5)

There was also an element of social commentary in Sargent's works that was evinced by some of his portraits of women. For instance, according to Banta (1987), Sargent was an artist who was "born to depict a hybrid people, vagabonds of the mind, to portray a strain of physiological and psychological transformation in the evolution of a new species," and Sargent's portrait of "Miss Elsie Palmer" is reflective of this observation (130). The portrait remains compelling in the manner in which the subject captures the gaze of the viewer, though, and it was even used for the cover of a periodical in the 1970s: "Sargent's strained, stiff portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer, all in white against a dark panelled background, [was] used for the front cover of the Penguin (1974) edition of Chance" (Jones 116).

Wilton Phipps, c. 1884 (Figure 6)

Among the portraits Sargent made in c.1884 was that of Mrs. Wilton Phipps (Downes 25). According to this author, "Exhibited at London, 1886; at Grand Central Galleries, New York, 1924. Mrs. Phipps is the grandmother of the infant she is holding in her lap. She wears a blue-gray dress, and the child is in white, with a baby cap of bluish-white. The background is a conventionalized landscape. Mrs. Phipps's gray hair is relieved against a dark mass of foliage. The treatment of the drapery is perhaps a little fussy, a rare defect in Sargent's work. Somehow, Sargent does not seem to have comprehended in this work infancy, and here one feels a little overstraining of the style of the English eighteenth century" (Downes 143). Another commentator noted that the portrait was, "Very charming in aspect and distinguished in its color scheme of black and white" (William a. Coffin quoted by Downes at 143). This portrait was engraved on wood by Timothy Cole for the Century Magazine in 1912 (Downes 143).

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, 1889 (Figure 7)

Unlike Madame X's sideways facial pose, this portrait draws the viewer's gaze upward to see what all of the commotion is about. The commotion is a crown and the subject is resplendent is royal garb. All in all, this portrait was right on the money, so to speak, for its intended audience and it received favorable reviews at the time. For example, in his essay, "Modernism's Subjects in the United States," Leja (1996) reports that, "Sentimental genre art was by no means the only artistic vehicle for constituting a modern subject. Those commentators who treated it condescendingly and associated its potency with socially inferior viewers frequently expressed other preferences. Some authors of commentaries on the art at the 1893 fair explicitly disparaged the sentimentality and anecdotal narrative of such works as Breaking Home Ties and the Struggle for Work. They tended to prefer displays of bravura technique in a more courtly academic style. John Singer Sargent's Portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth was popular among such commentators, its formal brilliance making Hovenden's lower-keyed academicism seem plain by comparison" (65).

Sources: As indicated.

Likewise, a similar discussion of selected portraits of women by Whistler is provided in Table 4 below.

Table 4.

Selected Portraits by Whistler and Discussion.

Work

Discussion

Began the White Girl, afterwards entitled Symphony in White, No. 1, a portrait of Jo, 1861 (Figure 7)

According to Neil and Burkett (2007), "Whistler started painting the White Girl in December 1861, while he was living in Paris. The model was his mistress Joanna Heffernan, but the main subject of the painting is its subtle range of white color. Rejected by the Royal Academy, it was first shown in London in 1862, and then at the Salon des Refuses the following year, where it caused a furor. In London the painting was seen as an attempt to illustrate Wilkie Collins' recent novel the Woman in White; in Paris it was interpreted as mourning lost innocence. But whistler denounced such specific interpretations, and later prefixed the original title with Symphony in White, No. 1" (Johanna Heffernan, Whistler's mistress, modeled for this portrait (1-2). During the summer of 1862, Whistler exhibited the White Girl at the newly opened Berners Street Gallery, and his works were praised by Baudelaire (McNeill Whistler: An Exhibition of Paintings and Other Works 1960:16). According to one authority, "The White Girl (1861-62), gives us an impression, a perception of certain characteristics that she contains but that may be isolated from her (and that may be discovered, potentially, in some other form as well). The image -- the product of the impression's wild logic -- constitutes no more than a momentary arrest of the flux of time and space, which is represented here by the 'flickering shadows' among which Isabel sits. These excited, agitated shadows also serve as a projection of Isabel's internal state, suggesting" (Parkes 616). That may be reading more into the portrait than it warrants, but it is clear that the artist invested a great deal of time and effort on perfecting the details and getting things "just right" for his favored subject's portrayal in this portrait. Nevertheless, the portrait caused a stir because of the nature of his relationship with his subject: "Whistler caused a sensation with his Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (1862), which was exhibited at the Salon des Refuses in 1863; the model was his longtime, Irish-born mistress Joanna Hiffernan, who was replaced by Maud Franklin, his second mistress, in the 1870s" (390).

Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl, 1864-5 (Figure 8).

In her essay, "Response: On Feminine Phantoms Mother, Child, and Woman-Child," Pyne (2006) reports that, "For many American artists and critics who came to prominence from 1885 to 1915, Whistler's art presented an aesthetic paradigm that was understood as feminized in its method and imagery. Whistler's imagery also provided the Photo-Secessionists, from Clarence White to Kasebier to Stieglitz himself, with the figure of the "White Woman" (Fig. 3, Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl, 1864), the spiritualist table rapper gazing into a mirror or crystal ball. This white body, invested with purity and the powers of the mystic, was a trope with which Stieglitz and other Photo-Secessionists identified" (Pyne 44). This portrait appears to have created some trouble in Whistler's private little paradise as well. According to Gregory (1959), "The living-room with its Chinese screens, the mantelpiece where Jo stood as the little White Girl with the fan, also reflected scenes much to Mrs. Whistler's taste formed in the modest austere places where she lived in the United States. The Victorian fashion of crowded rooms was absent here; in that sense, she felt at home. The presence of Jo, however, created embarrassment, and whenever Mrs. Whistler hired a maid to do the housework -- if the girl was at all presentable -- she would find her strolling serenely naked into Whistler's studio on the second floor. A certain air of tension developed in the small household. She had always been indulgent to Whistler's whims, yet her sense of propriety became precariously unsettled; this was not home according to her standards of conduct" (100).

Arrangement in Gray and Black, No. 1," 1871-2 (Figure 9)

Any discussion of Whistler would be incomplete without a mention of his mother and her now world-famous portrait. Whistler's mother moved to London, with failing eyesight, to live with her beloved son in 1863; according to Gale (1992), "The work, first entitled Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1 (1872), is skillfully structured along rectangular lines; it was purchased by the French government (1891) and now hangs in the Louvre" (390). Even with his abundant ego, it is unlikely that Whistler would have predicted the impact that this portrait has had on the entire world: "Concerning this canvas, he wrote that the public could have no interest in the identity of the portrait; it was of interest only to him that it was 'a picture of my mother.' That millions have identified this canvas with their love for their own mothers suggests that Whistler was more inspired by human significance than his theories allowed him to admit" (Flexner 1950:57).

Sources: As indicated.

Conclusion

The research showed that women have been portrayed in various ways over the last three hundred years, and most of the scandalous reactions that were noted would not cause any fuss at all today. In fact, in truth, it is hard to see what all of the fuss was about at the time, but those were different times of course. Women were shown to represent important subjects for works of art in general because such representations tended to reflect the overall health of a society and how women were regarded. Such portrayals of wealthy women and members of the royalty were also shown to provide a standard by which the common folk could aspire in their portraiture, and it is reasonable to posit that although the wealthy and regal members of society did not regard the medium as a social leveling field, the impact was nevertheless the same. Portraitists such as Sargent and Whistler were also shown to be in big demand, but Sargent appears to have outdistanced Whistler in terms of dollars earned and notoriety generated during his lifetime. Finally, the research also showed that the portrayal of women in portraits during the 18th and 19th centuries experiences some profound change as women's roles in society were being reconsidered and their economic clout became more relevant than long-standing concepts concerning how they should be treated and portrayed.