This is a terrible exhibition. The American painter John Singer Sargent is a great identity artist, fascinated by the nature of social being. He does not paint people in isolation, but as players in a social world in a way that is surprising, modern and so truthful that it hurts. Trained in 19th-century Paris, he brought brushwork tinted by Manet and Monet to portraying late Victorian and Edwardian British society, and was particularly drawn to those who did not fit into the old order – such as the young Jewish women who joyfully proclaimed their individuality in Ena and Betty, daughters of Asher and Mrs. Wertheimer. But was he, above all, a fashion painter, as this show claims? Not really. What the hell are they talking about?
This daring artist of modern life is turned into a stuffed shirt by a show that puts the dress before the face, the hat before the head and the crinoline before the soul in an obsessive, short-sighted discussion. A painter who has a lot to say to us becomes a relic here without any relevance.
The first thing you see when you walk in is an old opera house, beautifully preserved and beautiful in its time. But this black lace artifact sits heavily next to the first painting, Sargent’s portrait of Aline de Rothschild, Lady Sassoon, whose sharp face is full of life and humor. That’s the difference between a work of art and a centuries-old dress: the painting is as old as the dress, but a person lives in it.
Throughout this show, Sargent’s sparkling works are miserably displayed. Everywhere there are garments in display cases that obstruct sight lines and distract from the art instead of illuminating it. A hilarious example is his portrait of Lord Ribblesdale, a distinctly Sadean image of an aristocrat in top hat, black coat and boots holding a riding crop that he may be about to use on a horse or maid. Rather than letting this fascinating portrait speak for itself, it is displayed next to a box containing a top hat, made in the late 19th century by Cooksey and Co of London, as the pedantic label indicates.
The curators have gone to the trouble of borrowing this gem from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, but I have no idea what its presence adds to our appreciation of Sargent. Reconstructing the clothes his sitters wore seems as perverse as digging up their skulls and putting them on display, complete with forensic reconstructions of their faces, to see how accurately he painted them. The wrinkled silk seems just as macabre to me. They belong in an attic with a rocking horse that moves on its own.
The canvases are not only full of old clothes, but also shouted out by obtrusive labels and set horribly against the ever-changing wall colors and lighting
The meticulous sartorial scholarship is misplaced. A painting is a fiction, not a jumble of facts, and no artist knew that better than Sargent. Born to American parents living in Europe, he was cosmopolitan, ironic and sophisticated – like a character in a Henry James novel. James essentially became a friend, and there are subtle connections between their artistry. Both could be mistaken for conservatives by an idiot. But James explores the trembling complexity of the human psyche and the nature of morality with thrilling yet heartbreaking power. Sargent, too, is a portraitist of subtlety and mystery, bringing out the ‘character’ of his people – with quotation marks as James might put it – in wisps and dashes of impressionistic brushwork. Sargent and James would make a much better exhibition.
Instead, “Fashion was central to John Singer Sargent’s achievements as a portraitist,” reads the text on the opening wall. No, it wasn’t. Painting, yes. It is the way he paints that allows his art to breathe. But here it’s hard to see that. The canvases are not only full of old clothes, but also shouted out by obtrusive labels and set horribly against the ever-changing wall colors and lighting. Worst of all, there is no narrative logic. The exhibition sacrifices any sense of Sargent’s life as an artist to its essayistic theme.
This is all the more tragic because so many of Sargent’s best works have been loaned out. If I were the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I would have serious complaints about the way its treasure, Madame X, is displayed. This portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau in an off-the-shoulder dress was daring for the 1880s, even in Paris, where the contrast of dark material and pale, slightly bluish flesh horrified the 1884 Salon exhibition. But far from getting the stand it deserves, it is shown beneath a forgettable quote painted in large letters.
Worse, it just comes in without any build-up or history (other than fashion history). We learn nothing about the Paris in which Sargent began his career: the capital of the avant-garde where Manet and the Impressionists were engaged in an artistic civil war with the conservative Salon. Sargent knew the modernist rebels, having met Monet as early as 1876, and his later portrait of the Impressionist on his easel shows how attracted he was to such ideas. Madame X brings that knowledge to the Salon establishment and plays on the border between decency and indignation.
Related: How John Singer Sargent made a scene
Sargent had miscalculated slightly and people were more upset than he had hoped. Is it the black dress that shocked the Salon? No, it was sex. Gautreau, and not the dress, is the star, as she exudes sophisticated glamour, knowingly controlled as she averts her sharp profile. It is a novel, compressed into a portrait. Sargent challenges us to wonder who this amazing character is, where she has been, and where she might go next. Gautreau collaborates with him in creating the fiction and inciting fantasies.
This portrait of a lady shows how Sargent is as elusive and complex a fabulist as his alter ego James. Every painting in this exhibition is equally rich, but the curators insist on their narrow, clothing-based interpretation. It’s extremely difficult to see past that in the chaotic, non-narrative display. An artist as good as Sargent needs space, decent lighting and not much else – certainly not quotes and props.
If you like historical millinery, this might be for you. If you like great art, stay home and read The Portrait of a Lady.
• Sargent and Fashion is at Tate Britain, London, from February 22 to July 7