John Singer Sargent
Mrs. Joshua Montgomery Sears (Sarah Choate Sears)

ArtistAmerican, born Italy, 1856–1925
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Mrs. Joshua Montgomery Sears (Sarah Choate Sears)
Date1899
PlaceLondon, England
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsCanvas or panel: 58 1/8 × 38 1/8 in. (147.6 × 96.8 cm)
Frame (outer): 68 9/16 × 49 13/16 in. (174.1 × 126.6 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by George R. Brown in honor of his wife, Alice Pratt Brown
Object number80.144
Non exposé

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Department
American Art
Object Type
Description

This portrait depicts John Singer Sargent’s lifelong friend Sarah Sears, a photographer and patron of the arts in Boston. Her alert pose, intense gaze, and upper-body posture contrast with the seemingly relaxed position of her lower body, an instance of how Sargent seemed to capture, as one critic wrote, “the nervous tension of the age.”


Sears played an important role in a number of artists’ careers by buying their works and providing additional support. Together with her friend, and often rival, art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner, Sears served as a preeminent Boston tastemaker at the turn of the 20th century. In addition, Sears was an accomplished painter and photographer who exhibited her work in important international exhibitions such as the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago and the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, New York.


In this painting, Sears’s satin dress exemplifies Sargent’s extraordinary skill at rendering white, subtly nuanced with painterly flourishes of lavender, blue, and pink. The stunning surface display of paint connotes elegance and dash, and illustrates what made Sargent the portraitist of choice for the aristocracy of England and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries


ProvenanceCollection of Mrs. Joshua Montgomery Sears, Boston

To daughter, Mrs. James D. Cameron Bradley, Boston

To Charles D. Childs Gallery, Boston

Ex-collection: Benjamin Sonnenberg, New York, NY, 1950-1978

Sold by Hirschl and Adler Galleries, Inc, New York, to the museum on December 15, 1980
Exhibition HistoryExhibited: at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1905.

Exhibited: "Exhibition of Portraits by Livivg Artists," Copley Society, Boston, 1919

Exhibited: "Memorial Exhibition of thte Works of the Late John Singer Sargent," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no. 61, p.8, 1925 painting incorrectly dated 1896 in catalogue

Exhibited: "Memorial Exhibition of the Work of John Singer Sargent," Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, n. 34,. p. 6, 1926 illustration plate 34 in catalogue

Exhibited: "Sargent's Boston," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no. 31, p.68, plate 50, illustrated p. 61, 1956

Exhibited: "American Art from the Gallery's Collection," Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, NY, p.82, no. 68, ill. p. 83, 1980

Exhibited: "American Portraiture in the Grand Manner, 1720-1920," Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 12 Nov. 1981 - 31 Jan. 1982 (LN:81.18).

Exhibited: "American Portraiture in the Grand Manner, 1720-1920," National Portrait Gallery, Wash., D.C., 17 Mar. - 6 June 1982 (LN:81.18).

Exhibited: M/M G.R.Brown, Houston TX, Dec 20 - 27 1982 (LN:82.42)

Exhibited: "American Painters in the Age of Impressionism", The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. December 4, 1994 - March 26, 1995. Exhibition catalogue published, MFAH.

Exhibited: "In the Company of Women: Selection from The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," at The Seventh Regiment Armory, New York, NY, during the 1998 International Fine Art Fair, from May 6-13, 1998 (LN:98.21)

Exhibited: "Impressionism in Boston," at Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, April 26, 2003 - November 9, 2003.

"Houston's Sargents," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Brown Foundation Galleries, February 14 - May 9, 2010.

"American Made: 250 Years of American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 7 July 2012 - 2 January 2013.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Signed and dated in paint at upper right corner, recto: "John S. Sargent 1899."

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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