"A comprehensive and engaging biography of the artist . . . A precise and erudite writer with a strong, authoritative voice, Fisher combines biography, history, and art criticism to give readers an immersive vision of Sargent’s extraordinary life and times . . . [His] ability to get to the heart of Sargent’s genius makes The Grand Affair a truly defining work, and one worth revisiting in order to relish every last detail." —Michael Patrick Brady, WBUR
"[A] sensitive biography . . . Fisher wisely avoids making sweeping claims about Sargent’s sexuality, choosing instead to examine how 'the protected and sanctioned camaraderie of the studio' enabled the painter’s art and social life to take on quietly unconventional forms." —The New Yorker
"[An] extremely well-researched and anecdotally rich biography . . . The Grand Affair is not reductive; it’s a full-scale, fascinating story of an exceptional artist, informed by the new freedom to discuss homosexuality in a way that was not possible before." —Andrew Holleran, The Gay & Lesbian Review
"[The Grand affair] begins from a new perspective, investigating every nook and cranny of Sargent’s peripatetic life, looking for tangible clues to Sargent the man . . . Intriguing . . . Fisher indisputably gives us much to reflect on regarding the artist’s travels, his social and studio circles, his close friends, and the hitherto largely hidden gay enclaves of the Belle Époque." —Sue Roe, The Wall Street Journal
"[Fisher] writes perceptive appreciations of such famous paintings as Portrait of Madame X . . . These passages and many more forcefully remind us of the sheer beauty of Sargent’s work . . . Fisher has worked hard to integrate [Sargent's] two halves into a coherent portrait of a complicated man . . . Valuable." —Wendy Smith, The Boston Globe
"[An] absorbing new biography . . . A very lively and illuminating reassessment of one of the greatest painters of his time." —Peter Parker, The Spectator
"A vibrant, authoritative biography . . . Sargent’s 'social and aesthetic relevance—both to his time and ours,' Fisher argues convincingly, derives from 'his representation of an ever-more-complex modernity and an ever-more-diverse and multicultural world.' A sensitive, nuanced portrait." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“In this masterful biography, Paul Fisher reveals the rich and shadowy truths at the heart of John Singer Sargent’s life, while also offering a stunning reassessment of the famous painter’s work. Sargent, we learn, was far more than a polished society artist—he was a bold seeker who was impatient with rules and struggled to free himself from the constraints of his world, from racism to restrictive gender roles. A thrill to read, The Grand Affair is entirely absorbing—suspenseful, witty, poignant, and gripping.” —Charlotte Gordon, author of Romantic Outlaws, winner of the National Book Critics Circle award in biography, and distinguished professor of English at Endicott College
"Already an adept biographer, Paul Fisher has found his subject in John Singer Sargent, just as the fortunate Sargent has acquired his ablest chronicler to date. Replete with fresh critical assessments, The Grand Affair treats readers not only to a total immersion in the cosmopolitan swirl of Sargent’s circles of aesthetic and social affinity, but also to the rare enchantment that takes hold in the best biographies, when writer and subject are perfectly matched." —Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast
"The Grand Affair is enthralling. Sweeping in scope and startling in detail, it is a dazzling recreation and reevaluation of Sargent’s life and artistic vision. This book brilliantly displays and interrogates the underlying homoeroticism not only of Sargent's work, but of late 19th and early 20th century art. This is the in-depth study of Sargent—and his world—for which art historians and scholars of gender and sexuality have been waiting." —Michael Bronski, professor at Harvard University and author of A Queer History of the United States
"John Singer Sargent has long been seen as a 'society artist,' a sumptuously gifted painter who flattered the rich and famous, and was out of step, stylistically and temperamentally, with the edgier art of the Impressionists and their followers. In The Grand Affair, Paul Fisher blows these prejudices to pieces. Sargent was every bit as adventurous as his most advanced contemporaries, Fisher argues, though in ways that have been, for various reasons (some prudish, some academic), obscured for over a century. He gives us an intimate tour inside the ambiguous world of Sargent’s studio, with its exotic costumes and elaborate, gender-bending roleplay. Seemingly indifferent to the erotic charms of women, Sargent painted his female models, his 'divas,' with a marvelous sense of eruptive power. Fisher argues, convincingly, that these portraits, like the drop-dead fabulous Madame X, were in fact self-portraits of a sort—'transgressive and independent in a way that he couldn’t be himself.' Fisher seamlessly weaves together biography, social history, art history, aesthetic theory, and gossip. This is a dazzling book." —Christopher Benfey, author of Degas in New Orleans.
"The Grand Affair is a splendidly readable, fast-paced biography replete with fascinating details. This book is both an insightful psychological study and a vivid panorama of the many places Sargent called home." —Christina Thompson, author of Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia and editor of the Harvard Review
09/01/2022
John Singer Sargent was a mystery: an outgoing American painter and personage (who hobnobbed with the likes of Henry James, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Monet), about whose private life few details are known. Biographer Fisher (American studies, Wellesley Coll.; House of Wits) is uniquely qualified to delve into the artist's life, having helped organize the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's 2020 exhibition Boston's Apollo: Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent. As a portraitist, Sargent was known for teasing out the personalities of his elite subjects, which Fisher argues landed him high-profile commissions and made him a darling of the Gilded Age. This book also sheds light on Sargent's loving relationships with his sisters and parents, his models, and his friends. Fisher suggests that Sargent, who was not out as a gay man, expressed his appreciation of the male form through his art. VERDICT A sensitive biography that fleshes out the personal life of a private artist who was a product of his time. Fisher's work complements and expands on previous Sargent biographies, including Stanley Olson's comprehensive 1986 book John Singer Sargent: His Portrait.—Maria Ashton-Stebbings
★ 2022-09-22
The life of an enigmatic artist.
In a vibrant, authoritative biography, Fisher, a professor of American studies at Wellesley, examines the cultural landscape in which John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) rose to prominence, his development as an artist, and the “nonnormative complexities of gender and sexuality” that characterized his relationships. In considering Sargent’s sexuality, the author contributes to an already robust scholarly inquiry by biographers and historians by taking a measured perspective on what he calls romantic friendships with men such as artist Albert de Belleroche and Sargent’s longtime valet, Nicola d’Inverno. “It’s unclear,” Fisher writes, whether the men in Sargent’s circles “even knew about each other’s proclivities or consciously chose each other’s company on that basis.” In the author’s view, Sargent was a man “torn between his longstanding inclinations for transgressive passion on the one hand and frosty respectability on the other.” Raised in an expatriate family dominated by an unconventional, peripatetic mother, Sargent was “powerfully drawn to dynamic, rule-breaking women,” such as his patron Isabella Stewart Gardner and his friend Vernon Lee. In the European cities in which he visited and worked, he was attracted to “decadents and bohemians,” street people, Venetian gondoliers, Spanish dancers, in whose company he was able to “give rein to an idiosyncratic genius hardly allowed to show itself in the more conventional Victorian world.” Both worlds informed his acclaimed career, much of which was dominated by portraiture of the rich and famous, particularly “stylish, well-connected women.” He painted “not only what he knew, but whom, and whom he wished to know better,” portraying his subjects with a rare and sometimes—as in the portrait Madame X—scandalous sense of intimacy. Sargent’s “social and aesthetic relevance—both to his time and ours,” Fisher argues convincingly, derives from “his representation of an ever-more-complex modernity and an ever-more-diverse and multicultural world.”
A sensitive, nuanced portrait.
