Painter’s Easel to Treble Clef: Friendship through Music
With a John Singer Sargent exhibition, ‘Painting Friends’, taking place in London’s National Portrait Gallery, Riddle sets a musical soundtrack to his portraits of leading composers
Article by Coriander Stuttard
Visiting the John Singer Sargent exhibition ‘Painting Friends’ in London’s National Portrait Gallery, one can’t help being struck by the group of eclectic friends that Sargent surrounded himself with during his life. As well as an artist, Sargent was a fine musician and remained fascinated with music throughout his life. He was not afraid to support musicians and artists of the time, and friendships were a key part of his personal and professional life. Here are a few musical recommendations put his portraits into context.
Verdi – La Traviata Riccardo Muti – Verdi: La Traviata, Act 1: “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici”
John Singer Sargent was born in 1856 in Florence, three years after La Traviata was completed, and Verdi’s music was regarded as extremely patriotic to Italians in the time leading up to unification. Sargent’s American parents were travelling expats in Europe and, whilst the young Sargent’s schooling was unconventional, he was exposed to art, music and literature and was a proficient pianist himself. But although he spent his early years in Italy, it was Parisian musicians who would eventually have a profound effect on Sargent.
Sargent painted the Pasdeloup Orchestra at the Cirque d’Hiver in around 1879-80 and no doubt enjoyed attending the ‘concerts populaires’- cheap Sunday afternoon performances in the Parisian outdoor amphitheatre. Jules Etienne Pasdeloup conducted the orchestra for nearly 30 years, promoting some of the more controversial ‘modern’ music of the time, which Sargent also publicly supported. Many works by composers such as Berlioz, Bizet and Duparc were given premieres at these events and the concerts influenced the development of French symphonic music. In 1886, (after Sargent’s painting), Pasdeloup staged a successful festival dedicated to César Franck. Cesar Franck – Symphony in D Minor: III. Allegro non troppo
Bizet’s L’Arlésienne Suites no.1 and 2 Georges Bizet – L’Arlésienne Suite No.1: Prélude were given their premiere at one of the Pasdeloup concerts in 1872, two years before Sargent arrived in Paris. However, Sargent must have encountered, and been influenced by, Bizet’s music – they had a common love of Wagner, who was not universally appreciated at the time, as well as Spanish music and dance.
As Sargent was beginning his studies in Paris in 1874, Bizet was beginning work on the opera Carmen. Although it is now one of the best known operas, there was initial opposition to its composition and then negative reports of the first staging, complete with accusations of plagiarism, poor melodies and an amoral heroine.
Bizet very much took the negativity to heart and died soon after - it was only after a special staging of Carmen on the night of his funeral that he was hailed a master. Sargent, being fully aware of musical life, new works and composers in Paris, would no doubt have encountered Carmen. Georges Pretre – Bizet: Carmen, Act 1: “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” (Habanera)
Sargent was also fascinated with Spanish music and flamenco dancing, having travelled to and painted in Spain at various points in his life. His ‘La Carmencita’ portrait of 1890, exhibited in the ‘Painting Friends’ exhibition, is one of many he made of the singer-dancer Carmen Dauset who captivated him in New York. It is an example of Sargent’s keenness to represent art forms and characters he found enticing, even if they did not always appeal to the public.
Richard Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen or ‘The Ring Cycle’.
Wagner’s Ring Cycle is a huge cycle of four operas which the composer intended to be performed over three days at a specially constructed opera house with an ambitious orchestra, complete with specially developed instruments such as the Wagner tuba. Everything about the Ring Cycle is on a vast and elaborate scale. It’s a work that features ‘leitmotifs’ - particular musical strains assigned to characters in the plot running through the different operas to give coherence.
It is difficult to immediately recommend that one listens to fifteen hours of music, but Sargent was a huge Wagner fan and may even have attended the first staging of The Ring in London in 1882. He enjoyed a longstanding friendship with a fellow Wagner-lover - the novelist, poet and critic Judith Gautier - and painted several portraits of her in the mid 1880s during his time in London and the English countryside. In the summers before he painted ‘Carnation Lily Lily Rose’, Sargent immersed himself for extended periods in Broadway in the Cotswolds, where he stayed as part of a group of artists and writers which included Henry James and the American artists Edwin Austin Abbey and Frank Millet. Here, Sargent – an accomplished pianist - reportedly worked his way through Wagner’s ‘Trilogy’ with the help of a singer, Gertrude Gisswold. The music is extraordinarily beautiful, and develops slowly over a number of hours, but here are three tasters:
Daniel Barenboim – Wagner: Lohengrin: Prelude to Act 1
Richard Wagner – Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), WWV 86b, Act 3: Ride of the Valkyries
Sargent was also a devoted supporter of Gabriel Fauré and worked constantly to promote his music in London as well as in Paris. Sargent’s close group of influential musical patrons, well represented in his portraits, became important to Fauré and meant that he was also introduced to the English composer Edward Elgar. The extraordinarily generous musical benefactor Leo Schuster held regular musical soirées attended by Sargent and Fauré and for one, Fauré made a special arrangement of his song cycle ‘La Bonne Chanson’. Philippe Jaroussky – Fauré: La Bonne Chanson, Op. 61: III. La lune blanche luit dans les bois
Fauré also reportedly wrote some songs for another of Sargent’s sitters, the amateur singer Mabel Batten – ‘Aprés un Rêve’ is another fine example of the beauty of his vocal writing. Gabriel Fauré – Après un rêve Sargent remained loyal to the friendship and, during hard times for Fauré, sent him money. In return, Fauré sent him the manuscript for the 2nd Piano Quintet. Gabriel Fauré – Piano Quintet No.2 in C minor, Op.115: 1. Allegro moderato.
Sargent kept up his piano playing throughout his life, reportedly breaking up long portrait sessions by playing to his sitters. It’s interesting to wonder what he played at such times – Fauré, Chopin or perhaps piano music from his Italian beginnings such as the Scarlatti Sonatas. For a man whose paintings have sometimes been criticised as being too ‘nice’ and ‘a little sickly’ – retrospectively, perhaps, being compared to the beginnings of post-impressionism - he wasn’t afraid to support the contemporary music of his time. 