Why Creatives Need Creative Friends

Musings on a John Singer Sargent exhibit at the Met

Several years ago when I lived in New York, my friend and I were caught in a rainstorm while strolling through Central Park. Naturally, we made a mad dash for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

We had no umbrellas and so arrived soaking wet, but we were not the least bit disappointed by this unexpected turn our day had taken. No matter how many times I visited the museum, those wide echoing halls and long corridors always held something new to see.

On this particular afternoon, my friend and I headed to a special exhibit on the American painter John Singer Sargent (1856–1925).

He is known as the leading portrait painter of his generation, producing some 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors in his lifetime.

The exhibit in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery in London displayed just 90 of them: gallery after gallery of some of the wealthiest and most brilliant minds of the Edwardian era.

Sargent earned his living from commissions of the rich and famous, and several of those impressive portraits were on display.

Here, for example, is Sargent’s imposing likeness of French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

And here is a striking charcoal of William Butler Yeats that Sargent sketched for the frontispiece of a collection of poems.

Most of the paintings in this collection, however, were quite different. They were intimate portraits of his family and close friends.

Some of these he had kept for himself, others he had given away as gifts. They were casual snapshots of moments caught in time, perhaps painted in an evening after dinner or on a picnic or while relaxing in the garden.

And who were Sargent’s friends?

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