John Singer Sargent’s Secret Muse

John Singer Sargent was gay and a society painter. As a young man in Paris he was "burned" when his portrait of Mme. Gatreau (Madame "X") was exhibited and caused a scandal. Commissions dried up. (His transgression was to represent a woman of racy reputation, heavily powdered and wearing a gown with one strap falling off her shoulder.) In London a chastened Sargent started afresh, learning how the game was played in the era of Oscar Wilde. The lesson that Sargent learned is one that all artist who depended upon private and public patronage had to learn. Society has its rules. It would be a shame if the rules of our time led us us to confound society's limits imposed upon the artist with the self-limit of personal prejudice. It isn't fair to judge Sargent against the contemporary ideal of an out gay man in an equal, interracial relationship. Sargent possessed what one critic called "a relentlessly elegant eye." He rarely bothered with anything that did not please it, especially when he was not obligated to paint tiresome society "mugs." For me the important thing is that his private work makes it clear that when he was working for his own pleasure he found black people--black men in particular--beautiful and entirely worthy of his pictorial gifts. It is those superlative gifts that have singled out McKellar for our consideration. They do not represent a crime against him as much as they confer upon him a glorious immortality few are privileged to have.

There's a Henry James short story called 'The Real Thing' - I'm sure Sargent would have known it, or maybe even been its inspiration. In it, an impoverished but genteel couple lower themselves to model, as gentility, for an artist's illustrations. They eventually quietly, have to switch with the role of the servants who look much more 'the part'. I'm reminded of it because it's a contemporary story of appearances and necessity that imply Sargent and his circle (James was a friend) were well aware of, and utilized as a matter of course, the distance between the authentic and theatric idealization.

Black or white or any other race, the models for art work are in a strange category all their own. They are both the focus and image of the artists' craft, the object the viewer sees, and non-existent as individuals, having been transformed into what the artist sees or imagines. If you go to a sketch class, and draw the models there, usually you are drawing form and ignoring the person before you. You are using their physical attributes as the armature to build your own vision upon.

Not exactly true... his water-colours in the Caribbean 'Figure and Pool' , 'Bathers' and others show nude black figures ... 'Figure with Red Drapery' at the Met may also be the same model.

That there is only a single portrait of Thomas McKeller speaks to both the racism and the tendency of artist's to objectify human beings. I'm thinking not only of Sargent but of Picasso's treatment of "muses--" women objectified with verbal or emotional abuse. It does not speak well for the artistic temperament and belies the humanity art lovers insist is inherent in works of art.

"As he looked more closely, he realized the man was black, which was unusual for Sargent’s work, “and as I realized most of them were of the same person, I wanted to find out more,” he added. Dr. Silver is the museum’s head curator." I realize this makes a great story, especially for an academic these day who can make a career off of identity politics, but I still don't understand how Dr. Silver knows the man was clearly black and not biracial or some other race? I think it is interesting if he were black, and "whitewashed," but I read the article and remain unsure how Dr. Silver so assuredly identified the subject's race? Any photos or written documents to support this claim?

How titillating - - and fabulous - - that Sargent potentially loved (and obviously adored, through his drawings and paintings of the subject) Mr. McKeller, all while discreetly dismantling the vivid separation between Gilded Age excess (those wallowing in it) and the invisible work force (black servants) that held it in place! The monumental portrait of Mr. McKeller is in a word, exquisite. I so enjoyed reading this fascinating article NYT, thank you and please keep up the excellent work!

The end of the article suggests that Sargent gave these drawings to Isabella Gardner, as his final coda, because he wanted her to eventually reveal what McKeller meant to him. It shows that while Sargent was both racist and demeaning to him, he put great importance on this one black man. Or perhaps the importance he placed was on his own drawings of this one black man. We may never know!

That Sargent changed a model's gender, race, or features when working on commission is unexceptional--artists have used available models and reference to create imaginary people for their clients since at least the Renaissance. That Mr. McKeller was black, and that he may have had a romantic relationship with the painter--those things are exceptional. And while they complicate the erasure of McKeller's likeness from Sargent's murals, the implication that this should be seen as evidence of Mr Sargent's personal racism (a painter who, on his own time and at his own expense CHOSE to paint Mr McKeller as he appeared, race and features intact, for the simple beauty and joy of it) and not of the prejudices of the patrons for whom he labored and the society in which he lived, is irresponsibly facile at best and a misleading smear at worst. It's probable that Sargent was a man of his place and time, and carried at least some of the baggage that implies. But John Singer Sargent was, himself, kept partially in hiding by the prejudices of his day, saw Thomas McKeller for the human being he was, and made a gift to him of their shared labor. Those are the things we KNOW. Why assume or invent the worst of the things we don't?

"Other works of naked black males by Sargent" In the summer of 2000, the Metropolitan had a small exhibit of works by Sargent, either watercolors or sketches in a different medium. He did them while visiting his friend in Coral Gables who built Vizcaya, the grand estate on the water. I distinctly recall a number of sketches of African-American men with fine physiques, naked or nearly unclothed. They were construction workers taking their noonday rest. One could certainly find them homoerotic. So my question is whether other art historians have made a connection to that cache of work? No reference to it is made in the Gardner show (but I have not read the catalogue).

I remember a major show at MFA on Sargent. In that show was the picture of McKeller that opens this article. I still remember how glorious it was. I'm going to be in Boston this summer. Perhaps I'll take in this show because I've never found any information about this picture and this model. Thank you for the article.

I am not a professional art academic but this is very clear to me: a viewer can quickly tell whether John Singer Sargent was intrigued or bored by the subject sitting before him. Handsome and athletic men (Dr. Pozzi, Thomas McKeller) were lovingly painted. Dramatic women (Madame X, Ellen Terry) were a favorite. And attractive children usually fared well. On the other hand, there are a number of society commissions—often the pleasant wives of rich and powerful men—that seemed to leave the artist cold. These portraits were part of a day's work. But I guess every artist needs to take the high-paying commissions in order to fund the projects that are done for love.

The role of the paid artist's model is by its very nature an anonymous one. The model provides an anatomical reference from which the artist creates a human figure brought forth in the desired medium, context, details and identity of the artist's imagination. This has been true for centuries, and it is the role McKeller served for Sargent's studies, classical murals, and other works -- all except those in which McKeller was actually named as the subject, such as that ravishing oil painting. That we now know McKeller was African American imposes a racial aspect onto this otherwise unexceptional professional relationship. (The rest is speculation.) Had Sargent not given Gardner those drawings, McKeller would have joined countless other nameless models and muses throughout history (of all races and genders) in anonymity, their only lasting legacy the images they left behind.

"The show also features Sargent’s only monumental male nude and his only portrait of McKeller as himself." This point above should have been more emphasized because it is rather central to the whole story. It is worth pointing out the full picture of the McKeller portrait makes Mr McKeller's ethnicity more apparent, which adds another layer to an already complicated picture of Sargent. It was a non-commissioned work so evidently Sergeant was content to paint the model as he himself wanted to. Without more info we wont know the whole story but the existence of this portrait is significant and adds to the mystery of Sargent.

The racial and potentially romantic aspects of this story are interesting and I am glad they are being explored. But these kinds of revelations also undermine a larger myth: the myth of the "solo genius." A surprising number of great artists and thinkers were highly collaborative. Artists worked in studios, with multiple hands sometimes working on a single painting. Playwrights like Chekhov and Shakespeare worked with the same actors again and again. Einstein created his own little "academy" of friends to discuss his ideas, when he was supposedly working alone as a patent clerk. Not to mention the contributions and ideas of countless wives, family members, friends, and servants whose names are never spoken of in the historical record. If Sargent worked with this model a lot, then McKeller was probably bringing something to the table. Maybe that something was romantic, but perhaps it was his patience, ideas, energy, or suggestions of interesting poses. It's time to put aside with the "great man" theory in art or history. We need to start thinking of cultural creation as the collaborative process that it really is in order to have a real understanding of what culture is, and who is making it.

A model is a stand-in and reference for the artist's vision. They are a tool. When you model, you agree to be in their hands. A model may be a muse, but the act of serving as a model is to fundamentally relinquish your identity in service to someone else's creative purpose.

Sargent was a fantastically gifted painter. He has some real masterpieces to his name including the Boit Children and El Jaleo. I can't think of any living painters who can draw with paint as well as he did while keeping the feeling of the paint alive. Paint quality. Being of his class and time, he couldn't possibly acknowledge his homosexuality. You really can't hide it in your art. It always comes out. Sargent had real feeling for male physical beauty. It's so nice that he left a remembrance of his relationship with this man.

I very much like the works of Sargent, hovering as they do between Velazquez and kitsch. We have long known that he was homosexual. “Che pecatto”, he might have said. The same for the young man’s “race.” Commentators do not know what he called himself. It probably wasn’t “black,” an omnibus category only invented in the Federal census of 1930. The model resembled many of the young men Sargent had met in his peregrinations in the previous thirty years in North Africa.

the original photoshop skin lightening!

The video link on the page to a short doc about McKeller is worth watching. His few remaining relatives have only brief memories of him but it offers plenty of context. Sargeant will always be a cipher: his letters were destroyed and his portraits are special partly because the faces in them seem to know a secret they dont want to tell.

You have to be careful how you react to this. First, because the motives for using the body model, and not the facial one, can be technical, not social. The face is the most private and personal part of a model's body. Is the final image, then, one of that PERSON, or of a monumentalized other person? That depends on the commission. If there was a political dimension to this, it's that there were not more "historic" black male hero-figures that the public demanded to see in the models, in the first place. Also, that Sargent wasn't paid more often for paintings of black men.

He was a good painter, watercolorist and muralist, but he was weak in his use of line in drawing.

As a Black person, I read this with a combination of elation and sadness. Elation, because recognition is finally coming due to someone who was often hidden from exposing his true identity, and now is finally free. Sadness, because this is too often the case for African-Americans in a country they have contributed generations of hard toil in helping to build, without ever truly attaining equal status in a land that prides itself as being the most egalitarian in the world. My gratitude goes out to all those who kept digging to unearth the background of Mr. Thomas McKeller, as well as John Singer Sargent for recognizing true beauty knows no color lines. And that beauty is only skin deep.

In this column is encapsulated a fascinating story raising the question, what was the relationship between the famous white artist and the black doorman. The one drawing depicting McKeller as black appears much more powerful, beautiful, ethereal than the others depicting white men, who appear anemic.

Being an artists' model isn't as easy as many think. Holding a pose, especially while twisting or holding the arms in the air, is pretty exhausting. I know: I did it for money while I was in college. If an artist found a model whose body he liked, who could take direction and hold poses without complaint, that model would be hired regularly. It may be intriguing to imagine a romantic relationship between the two men, but there's nothing in this story to indicate that. It's more likely that it was simply a working relationship valued by both Sargent and McKeller.

This is an astonishing revelation. The thought that Sargent might have had a relationship with McKeller seems entirely plausible, and adds to the sadness of learning about yet another black life that would have been wiped from the slate of history were it not for someone accidentally stumbling across the truth. Btw, several web sites offer a correction to the traditional narrative of Western art from the middle ages through the Renassiance that pretends blacks were never part of Europe or its art. My favorite is https://medievalpoc.tumblr.com

John Singer Sargent, an expat American, was a man of his times, meaning a racist. The same can be said for many people living in the United States today. I knew nothing of his relationship or paintings of McKeller but this doesn't change the fact that he's one my favorite artist. I also love Caravaggio, who was a murderer.

I believe some artist intend on letting the guessing game they create last long after their departure: deeming it the "spirit of fulfillment".

As an art historian I am very curious about what Professor Greene means when she refers to John Singer Sargent as a beloved painter of "early American art". Sargent was a late nineteenth century, early twentieth century artist whose work was once deplored by some modernists, like critic Roger Fry. More recently, Sebastian Smee, in an article published in the Washington Post, December 18, 2019, wrote of how the "velocity of modern life is often revealed" in his art. Might we not think of such eighteenth century artists as Gilbert Stuart, John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West as "heroes" of early American art? As to "canonical" what does that mean? Is there a canon of American art, and if so who wrote it? Locking Sargent up in inaccurate time frames and quasi-religious terminology will not disclose his genius. His genius was his appreciation for beauty and the elaborate way he captured what he saw with bravura, and a striking ability to dissemble. Thomas Keller, like his Italian model Olimpio Fusco, caught his eye and stirred his genius. He liked handsome men, he adored beautiful women...and, to paraphrase Keats, that is all we know and need to know. Try looking at Sargent without words, without the social construct of race and class and feel what you see. Surely that was what Sargent intended...to amaze and delight...at which he was an immortal success.

The purpose of a model is simply to wear the clothes, or in this case, not wear them; and to draw no attention to oneself. Without a head, would one know the body is of African descent? I'd be interested to know what remains in the written form about their relationship.

Being a studio model is and was a respectable and well paying career. At the very least, we know this is the case with McKeller. The elevator operations must have only been a side job, or a more steady one. I want to believe that Sargent did have a meaningful relationship with this man. It certainly shows emotion as depicted in the portrait.

I think this direction in looking at art and artists is fascinating. There is still so much to be told from paintings and the history of our culture black, white and every other color. Learning of the good and bad of our history is important, but in condemning people of the past from the point of enlightenment of our present, we must understand, we as humans are still evolving and will also one day be judged.

Miraculous finding. There has been, and I think we will continue to discover, important relationships between people who, because of their time, were forbidden to have relationships. The tragedy in stories like this is the famous white artist gets the known record of accomplishment, but the black partner has no record at all of who he really was — except as reflected in the white partner’s eye. The number of people, stories and accomplishments lost to us in this way is heartbreaking.

Congratulations on a beautiful and interesting focus show that wrestles with historical complexity in a sensitive manner. It's easy to mount politically correct exhibitions of contemporary art right now. It is a far more difficult--but I think ultimately more rewarding--endeavor to embrace the messiness of history, and to do so in a collaborative manner. If we do not include other voices in our work, how can we hear anything but our own echo?

John Singer Sargent was a great artist, and Thomas Keller a beautiful man and model. Together, they produced fabulous art, but also reflected their time and our long history of using Black people to create economic, artistic, and architectural masterpieces without giving them the credit they deserved. The damage this caused to the Black community, to our founding Declaration and to our humanity was and remains massive. This is another example of why we need, as a Nation, and as a people, to acknowledge this harm in all its dimensions, and try to repair the effects that have lasted to our current day.

Two days ago at the Brandywine museum in Pennsylvania which features paintings of N. C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth - N. C.'s son, and Jamie Wyeth - his grandson (among others); I saw an incredible portrait of a black childhood friend of Andrew's rendered as a hunter. The painting is called "Black Hunter" by Andrew Wyeth. The model for the painting was David Lawrence. I think the painting is a masterpiece. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F188658671875438435%2F&psig=AOvVaw3EUpYCK_Z2nbDnGkLPMyUD&ust=1583859936394000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCNiBh5nwjegCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD Douglas Jay Martin

"The Gardner was careful to consult African-American art historians, community leaders and others to ensure the exhibition was done sensitively." This is really interesting, but what does it actually mean? I understand the involvement of art historians, but what did community leaders contribute? And who were these "others"? Was this a move to community-based curatorship, giving the community a rubber stamp on museum decisions, or just PR?