The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC: Part 7, “The American Way”

In colonial times, John Singleton Copley, America's first significant native-born artist, successfully modeled his likenesses of America's elite after works by English masters, despite his lack of formal training. The only thing about this picture that is unique to Mrs. Bowers is the face. We know that her dress, her dog, her sofa, her landscape, even her hairdo and her jewelry come from a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds of Lady Caroline Russell. And Copley understood his colonial patrons, wanted to keep up with the fashionability of their London neighbors. Until the 19th century, most American painters either weren't Americans by birth or they trained in Europe. Which means that the works that they painted upon their return are necessarily international in flavor. This would include the great portrait of George Washington by Charles Wilson Peale, who studied in London prior to fighting in the Revolutionary War. And this familiar image by Gilbert Stuart. By the time he was a teenager, he had left for England and didn't come back for 20 years. He returned in 1793 to paint the nation's founding father and greatest hero. American Thomas Sully aimed to paint true royalty, Queen Victoria. This small canvas is the oil study that Sully carried back and forth to Buckingham Palace for his sittings with the Queen. Beside it hangs the finished masterpiece. Sully was the first American painter to portray Queen Victoria. He found her so delightful and charming that he wrote in his diary that he hoped that he could give a sense of the kind manner and dignity of the young queen. Born in England but long resident in Philadelphia, Sully worked three of the conventions that tied English court painters. Now this isn't to say that he painted a rakish image, but the idea that Queen Victoria would be literally ascending the throne, climbing the staircase up to the throne and looking back over her bare shoulder is really extraordinary. The best of late 19th century American portraiture tends to be something more than straightforward likenesses. Even realist Thomas Eakins seems to paint psychological profiles. This portrait of his wife was reworked to increase the pathos of her expression. The master of American portraiture was John Singer Sargent. His provocative painting Madam X is the anchor work in a gallery devoted to images of society folk. It was such a stunningly beautiful and striking image, just like the woman was herself. The woman was Madame Gautreau, the New Orleans-born wife of a French banker. She became one of the most notorious beauties of Paris in the 1880s. The short version of the story is that when Sargent painted it, the shoulder strap of the dress that she's wearing was falling down off one arm, and that in itself created such a degree of attention that he was asked to fix the strap, to put it back on her shoulder. When Sargent sold Madam X to the Met in 1916, he supposed it was the best work he'd ever done.