Letter from Boston

Sargent Exhibition

By MASAKO YAMADA

There is currently a very popular exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts featuring the works of John Singer Sargent. This exhibition has been featured in many local newspapers and magazines, and large advertisements are posted in the subway stations and on the sides of public buses. I don't know how popular Sargent is in general — especially outside the United States — but I do know that Bostonians like to claim him as one of their own.

I went to see the exhibition on a weekday morning, but the line was longer than the one to get into "Star Wars." Although local college students are usually allowed into the museum for free, I had to pay $5 (¥600) just to see this one exhibit, and I was told that I could not enter the hall until 12:30. The crowds were so thick that the museum had to limit the number of people entering the hall at any given time.

Even though I entered at the appointed time, the hall was still packed with people. All those people must have taken time off from work to visit the museum.

What is so intriguing about John Singer Sargent? Sargent was an American, but he was born in Europe and spent a great deal of his time there. He was of a class — the upper class — that mingled socially with sophisticated Europeans. It used to be fairly common for Americans of his class to hobnob in Europe. Many of his works depict members of his social circle. He was born a bit before the Lost Generation of expatriate Americans that congregated in Paris, but he painted plenty of portraits of the luminaries of his time, including John D. Rockefeller and Henry James.

I'm obviously not part of this high society, but I am intrigued by its customs. I think many of the other people at the exhibition visited for the same reason. It's also obvious that Boston still has many vestiges of these traditions. Boston is a pretty diverse city nowadays, but it still has many conservative elements.

My undergraduate college was once a place for proper young ladies to get an education and the school retains traditions from that age even today. The very expensive Beacon Hill area of Boston is known as the area where people with old money live. One can experience a whiff of this lifestyle by taking afternoon tea at one of the superdeluxe hotels downtown.

I also wanted to see this exhibi tion because one of my friends is a distant relative of John Singer Sargent. I went to see the exhibition with him, which made it much more interesting than going by myself.

I tried to imagine him in the same cosmopolitan setting. He doesn't live a blue-blooded lifestyle right now, so it was rather difficult. He laughed a little when I told him this (somewhat too honestly), but I think he wished he could experience some of that luster.

It's not too surprising that his life is very different from that of his famous relative — my lifestyle is nothing like that of my turn-of-the-century ancestors back in Kyushu, either. But I could see why he wanted to retain some of that family heritage. It's a heritage that thousands of eager museumgoers have been willing to stand in line to see.

The interesting thing, however, is that even Sargent himself seemed to get tired of painting high-class women in puffy dresses napping in the sun. Later in life, he rejected commissions by wealthy patrons and actively worked on more serious topics.

The last room in the exhibit hall featured some of his final works. The room had a completely different feel from the other rooms. It was dominated by a large mural depicting soldiers blinded during World War I. There were also some very conspicuous religious pieces, including a very heavy, stern bronze cross and an abstract mural of (probably) an African religion.

Judging from what he chose to depict toward the end of his life, I have the feeling that he would not have been too disappointed to see his descendants live a less glamorous life than his own.

Shukan ST: July 23, 1999

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