Tucked away in the verdant heart of Hampstead Heath, a new exhibition on John Singer Sargent’s portraits is on display within the grandeur of the English Heritage site of Kenwood House.
A mixture of delicate charcoal sketches and magnificent oil paintings depict a variety of affluent American women who traversed the Atlantic in order to make favourable marriages to landed British gentry around the fin du siècle. Heiress flips the script on the preconceived notion that these women were a money, and power, obsessed group of opportunists, but rather individualises them and sheds light on their fascinating stories and achievements in their own right.
A “strange and abnormal creature”, a description of the famed ‘dollar princess’ in the words of Lady Randolph Churchill. With transatlantic accents and many having untold fortunes in their own rights, it’s no surprise that these women were both alienated and put under the spotlight when they stepped into British high society at the end of the 19th century.
In Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance, Miss Hester Worsley, the young American heiress, is constantly ridiculed and serves as a target for Wilde’s sharp and humorous wit. The picture of these women was consistently painted with immorality and scandal, which makes it all the more remarkable to discover their impressive contributions to the society that had scrutinised them so viciously.
John Singer Sargent has always been set slightly apart from the rest of the western painting canon. Disregarded as commercial and a ‘society painter’ by his contemporaries, his portraits were criticised due to their unconventional composition and sometimes controversial subjects. As an American expat in Paris, a mysterious French painter in London, and the sophisticated European portraitist in America, he was regarded somewhat as an alien wherever he seemed to live. Perhaps it is this multinational identity that makes it understandable why he would paint these transatlantic dames.
Retrospectively, these portraits hold significance. The “dollar princesses”, as these women have been stereotypically named, were seen as a homogenous group. Money, power, and status obsessed, this misogynistic malignment might have remained dominant when discussing these women today. However, through this collection of portraits, we can see their individual and remarkable histories, and instead remember them for the ambitious women they were, rather than the caricatures that society had painted them out to be.
Take, for example, the charcoal portrait of Nancy Astor; her ambition and political prowess allowed her to be the first woman to take a seat as an MP in the House of Commons.
The effortless grace of Cora, Countess of Strafford, catches the eye of the viewer. It is quintessential Sargent, her dress intricate and at the height of fashion, while her eyes gazing at an unseen object is telling of the artist’s atypical composition. Even though she is not staring at the viewer, she commands the frame with her reclined pose, uninterested in the many eyes that seem to judge her place in society, a subtlety that only reaffirms her power and position. Many of the women themselves commissioned Sargent to capture their likenesses, including Cora, and it seems to make sense here why he was chosen, when stood face to face with her magnificence and opulence he so effortlessly translates onto the canvas.
The collection of charcoal portraits balance the delicacy of the form with the strength of the sitters’ characters. During the First World War, Edith Beatty had turned her home into an American Red Cross hospital, and had an art collection that rivalled even her much wealthier husband’s. Her intense gaze is not betrayed by the medium, instead it enhances the multiple facets that this woman contains, speaking to the approachability of her character.
The pièce de résistance sits at the centre of the Music Room, as Mrs Wilton Phipps is illuminated from within the canvas. Set against a dark background, the delicacy of the composition and the technique marry to produce a masterpiece in portraiture. She is placed at eye level to the viewer, so one can engage with the detailed expression with which she gazes back. Remembered for her multiple and dedicated endeavours, Mrs Phipps was made a Dame for her services to education as well as serving as chair of the Central Council for the London Blind after her vision started to fail her. Standing in front of this remarkable woman, one can’t help but appreciate Sargent’s intuition and ingenuity in enabling the viewer to connect with the emotion of the piece. It is as if the reverence exudes from the canvas through the fixed, intense gaze of the sitter, and her slight smile suggests that she knows the effect she is having.
Kenwood House, magnificently situated and finely adorned, is the perfect backdrop for this collection, bringing these women to life in what would have been their natural habitat. The intimacy of the exhibition renders the experience pensive and personal, really drawing one into each woman’s individual story, a whole immersion into this misunderstood, and sometimes forgotten, period of recent history.
The exhibition brings a renaissance to the fable of the ‘dollar princess’, reinterpreting those who fell victim to signs of the times and reinstating them as remarkable individuals in their own right.
