Exhibition Dates:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: April 27– August 3, 2025
Musée d’Orsay, Paris: September 22, 2025 – January 11, 2026
Exhibition Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, The Tisch Galleries, Gallery 899, 2nd floor
(New York, April 17, 2025)—Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 27, 2025, Sargent and Paris will explore the early career of John Singer Sargent (born 1856, Florence; died 1925, London), from his arrival in Paris in 1874 as a talented 18-year-old art student through the mid-1880s, when his infamous portrait Madame X (1883–84), now part of The Met collection, was a scandalous success at the Paris Salon. Featuring paintings, watercolors, and drawings, the exhibition will also include select portraits by Sargent’s contemporaries. The exhibition is the largest international exhibition of Sargent’s work since 1998 and the first ever monographic exhibition of Sargent’s art in France.
The exhibition is made possible by The Marguerite and Frank A. Cosgrove Jr. Fund.
Additional support is provided by Bank of America, The Sam and Janet Salz Trust, GRoW @ Annenberg, Jim Breyer, the Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed Fund, and Trevor and Alexis Traina.
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Sargent and Paris is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
“This magnificent exhibition will shed new light on a transformative period in the life and career of one of America’s most important painters,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “By situating Sargent’s work within the context of the city that formed and inspired him, Sargent and Paris will illuminate this influential artist’s meteoric rise, providing new insights into his unique talent and skill in capturing the vibrant society he inhabited.”
Stephanie L. Herdrich, Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Painting and Drawing at The Met, said: “Sargent’s career was indelibly shaped by the time he spent in Paris. Over the course of one remarkable decade, he created the boldest and most daring paintings of his oeuvre. Sargent and Paris will showcase these visually stunning and ambitious works, shedding new light on his distinctive artistic vision. We are thrilled to partner with the Musée d’Orsay to reunite this collection of great works in New York and Paris.”
Exhibition Overview
Sargent and Paris opens with the 18-year-old Sargent’s arrival in Paris in 1874 to pursue his ambition to become a painter. The first section, “In the Studio,” features the precocious drawings and paintings that impressed Sargent’s classmates in the teaching studio of leading French portraitist Carolus-Duran (1837–1917). Also on display, Sargent’s painted sketches from his time at the prestigious French government school, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, reveal his increasing proficiency. His relationships with members of the international community—students, artists, and patrons—were critical to his development. The section also includes candid images of his friends and his Portrait of Frances Sherborne Ridley Watts (1877, Philadelphia Museum of Art), the first painting that Sargent exhibited.
During his student years in Paris, Sargent was compelled to leave Paris in search of subjects for his art and spent his summers traveling. The next section, “Beyond the Studio,” explores how Sargent’s excursions to the French coast and to Capri, Italy, along with his first Atlantic crossing (in 1876) inspired him. His interest in painting outdoors was stimulated by contemporary artists, particularly the Impressionists. He often chose subjects popular at the time: local people, architecture, and seascapes. Sargent’s travels yielded major exhibition pictures such as Dans les Oliviers à Capri (1878, private collection) and En route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish), (1878, National Gallery of Art, Washington), which received critical attention at the Paris Salon, the annual state-sponsored exhibition.
Upon completion of his training, Sargent was determined to continue his travels to study historical art and find new subjects. Having lived in Italy and visited Spain as a child and adolescent, he was enchanted by the art and culture of both countries. “The Lure of Travel” captures his fascination with the unique characteristics of these places. This section features paintings made during Sargent’s extended trip through Spain and Morocco in 1879–80—including Fumée d’ambre gris (1880, Clark Art Institute)—and during two trips to Venice in the early 1880s. These paintings demonstrate his quest for subjects that Western audiences considered “exotic”: picturesque sites, vernacular architecture, and local people.
In the early 1880s, Sargent balanced his wanderlust with studio work in Paris. Determined to build his public career, he contrived increasingly ambitious paintings for exhibitions in Paris and abroad. As Sargent pushed boundaries, his bold works attracted notice from members of the international community, and he began receiving more portrait commissions. During an era of increasing wealth and social mobility, his sitters embraced self-presentation through portraiture—often to validate their standing. The striking works in “Fascinating Portraits” were created during a highly productive three-year period, from 1879 to 1882. Sargent’s earliest patrons were friends and acquaintances or members of artistic society, including the charismatic surgeon Dr. Pozzi (1881, Hammer Museum). Sargent and Paris will reunite the three magnificent portraits of members of the Pailleron family: playwright Edouard Pailleron (1879, Musée national du château de Versailles, on deposit at Musée d’Orsay), his wife Marie Buloz Pailleron (1879, National Gallery of Art, Washington), and their children Edouard and Marie-Louise Pailleron (1880, Des Moines Art Center).
“The Most Talked About Painter in Paris" highlights Sargent’s masterpiece The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), an emotionally probing portrait of the children of his friends. It is displayed with Sargent’s Las Meninas, After Velásquez (1879, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art), which reveals his debt to Spanish painter Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), whose paintings Sargent copied while at the Prado Museum during an artistic pilgrimage to Madrid.
Sargent built a significant network in Paris through talent, intellectual curiosity, and social acumen. He moved fluidly among sophisticated circles of artists, writers, and patrons. Many of the portraits in “Friendship and Patronage” bear witness to Sargent’s relationships with influential figures, including Louis de Fourcaud (1884, Musée d’Orsay) and Emma Allouard-Jouan (ca. 1882, Petit Palais), writers who helped bolster Sargent’s reputation. During these years, Sargent’s career as a portraitist flourished. He shrewdly catered to an upwardly mobile international clientele, becoming known as a flattering painter of women. The close friendships he formed with the dynamic women of Paris from artistic, literary, or high society, including Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White (1883, National Gallery of Art, Washington), were essential to his success and reveal his proximity to the city’s social and cultural epicenter.
In the second half of the 19th century, the fashionable, modern woman of Paris, the so-called Parisienne, became a fascination to French society that quickly spread abroad. The figure encapsulated a particular worldly elegance, unique to denizens of the capital. The six portraits in “La Parisienne” are by artists who inspired Sargent and with whom he competed for commissions and recognition, including his teachers Carolus-Duran (La Dame au Gant, 1869, Musée d’Orsay) and Léon Bonnat (Countess Potocka, 1880, Musée Bonnat-Helleu) and artistic role models such as Édouard Manet (La Parisienne, ca. 1876, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm). Traversing the spectrum of contemporary artistic tradition from conservative to progressive, these artists each offer their own interpretation of modern beauty. Sargent looked to their art as he sought to gratify his sitters and distinguish his portraits from those of his contemporaries.
The next gallery, “Madame X,” focuses on the iconic portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau (1859–1915), a glamorous figure in Paris in the early 1880s. Born in New Orleans to parents of French descent, Gautreau emigrated to Paris as a child and married a French banker in 1879, rising quickly in society. Fascinated by her arresting appearance and intending to create a magnum opus for the Paris Salon, Sargent convinced her to pose for him without a commission. Sargent’s art already had a reputation for capturing attention, but the portrait of Gautreau, displayed as Madame ***, brought intense scrutiny. Many critics used Gautreau’s appearance to question her morals: her “excessive” use of cosmetics, a symbol of vanity, and her “undress” (Sargent originally painted her dress strap sliding off her right shoulder). Despite the uproar, within days Gautreau was seen in Paris wearing a low-cut dress with a sparkling shoulder strap. When he sold the work to The Met in 1916, Sargent wrote that the portrait was “the best thing I’ve done,” and asked that it be titled Madame X. Sargent and Paris will reunite Madame X with numerous preparatory drawings and paintings, including, the oil sketch Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast (1882-83), which has never before left the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The exhibition will present an in-depth exploration of the creation of the painting and a nuanced view of the scandal.
Adjoining the Madame X gallery, “The Paris Salon of 1884,” recreates the effect of the annual exhibition using projections of paintings that were shown the same year. A selection of ephemera from the period will also be displayed in this room. Original publications, including cartoons and reproductions of the work, reveal some of the diverse reactions to Madame X. This commentary reached audiences across the globe and conveyed powerful ideas about contemporary values.
In the spirit of the Paris Salon, “RSVP: An Invitation to Respond,” at the end of the exhibition, invites visitors to be part of a conversation about Sargent’s art by responding in writing or drawing to the works they’ve seen.
The final section of the exhibition, “Uncanny Spectacle,” focuses on the immediate aftermath of the Madame X debacle. In June 1884, Sargent traveled to England for five months to fulfill several commissions; his British portraits, including Mrs. Albert Vickers (1884, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) helped redeem his reputation at the Paris Salon the following year. Encouraged by the public response and by the writer Henry James, 29-year-old Sargent moved to London, where he resided until his death in 1925. Still, Sargent never fully left Paris behind. He continued to exhibit in the French capital and returned often. He experimented with Impressionism as in Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood (1885, Tate) and maintained his connection to his French friends, including Auguste Rodin (1884, Musée Rodin) and others. The young artist soon became one of the most sought-after portraitists on both sides of the Atlantic. As Sargent accumulated honors and awards, one of the most meaningful may have been the purchase of his portrait, La Carmencita (ca. 1890, Musée d’Orsay), by the French state in 1892—securing his reputation in the city that formed him.
Visitors are encouraged to visit galleries 768, 770, and 771 in the American Wing to view later works by Sargent in The Met collection.
Beginning July 1, the complementary installation, Emily Sargent: Portrait of a Family, will be on view in gallery 773 of the Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art in the American Wing. This in-house exhibition features works by Emily Sargent (1857-1936), a talented amateur watercolorist, and members of her artistic family, including her older brother, John Singer Sargent, and their mother, Mary Newbold Sargent, who encouraged her children’s artmaking. Emily Sargent: Portrait of a Family takes a closer look at their creative aspirations and explores how paths diverged for daughter and son, revealing the challenges women artists faced in the late 19th century. The exhibition celebrates the recent gift—from the artists’ heirs—of 26 Emily Sargent watercolors, continuing a long legacy of family giving at the foundation of the Museum’s extensive Sargent holdings.
Emily Sargent: Portrait of a Family is made possible by the William P. Rayner Fund.
Credits and Related Content
Sargent and Paris is curated by Stephanie L. Herdrich, Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Painting and Drawing, at The Met; and Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, Curator of Drawings and Paintings, and Paul Perrin, Head of Curatorial and Director of Collections, at the Musée d’Orsay. They were helped by Caroline Elenowitz-Hess, Research Assistant at The Met.
Fully illustrated catalogues in English and French, with contributions from the exhibition’s curators and other leading scholars, will accompany the exhibition.
The Met is offering a variety of related art and educational programs. Check the Museum’s website for more information.
The catalogue is made possible by GRoW @ Annenberg and the William Cullen Bryant Fellows of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Additional support is provided by Allston Chapman, Anonymous, Robert M. Buxton, Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard, and Elizabeth Marsteller Gordon.
Education programs are made possible by Andree Caldwell.
Sargent and Paris will be featured on The Met’s website and Musée d’Orsay website as well as on social media.