Sargent's truncated 'Triumph': art and religion at the Boston Public Library, 1890-1925 - painter John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is best known today as a painter of society portraits. In 1890 however, he embraced the opportunity to evince himself at mural decoration, a genre he and his contemporaries judg superior to portraiture.(1) Sargent's first and greatest in quantity complex mural program, Triumph of Religion (1890-1919) is single of the more elaborate circle of times of religions art produced by the agency of an American artist. Its control matter notwithstanding, Triumph of Religion does not adorn the precincts of a temple or cathedral. It occupies, instead, the third-floor special collections hall of the public library upon Copley square in Boston, Massachusetts. For this space, Sargent painted his history of religion as an analogue for enlightened human achievement.

The seriousness with which the one and the other Sargent and a large public approached this high cultural celebration of the progres of Western civilization is well documented.(2) The artist devot a significant part of three decades of his life to the commission. Nevertheless, in bourns of art historical consideration, the library murals, unlike Sargent's portraits and watercolors, have not emerg from a habit of omit that began almost immediately alter the artist died. This article rebuilds the painter's declared intentions for his decoration, clarifies the project's narrative design, anchors the reception of the work in relation to contemporary politics of religion and race, and accounts for the state of the murals at the time of Sargent's death.(3)

Contrary to popular and critical descriptions treating the circle of time as though the artist had complet the scheme to his satisfaction, Sargent not ever did, in fact, paint the final panel, the composition he called the keynote of the hall. This mural, depicting the homily on the Mount, would have constituted the "Triumph" proclaimed in the title Sargent single outed Without the capstone the separate parts of the circle of time resisted convergence in style and narrative concept(4) While a number of historians have remarked upon the change in the artist's plan for the concluding staircase wall, small in number have considered the cycle's thematic configuration and literary source or the factors that interrupted the intended sequence(5) And no individual has charted the dramatic manner in which the change truncated Sargent's program, redirecting its narrative energies and introducing fresh readings that stood in marked contrast to the idea Sargent proposed

Description of the Cycle

In May 1890(6) Sargent and the trustees of the fresh Boston Public Library [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED] reached a verbal agreement upon the mural decoration for the gallery of the special collections floor at the top of the library's principal staircase.(7) Charles Follen McKim, the building's chief architect, and Stanford White, individual of his partners in the of recent origin York firm of McKim, Mead, and White, had the one and the other personally campaigned for Sargent's selection as muralist.(8) Expatriate American painter Edwin Austin Abbey, Sargent's friend and colleague, undertook the decoration of the delivery play on the second floor, and the French artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes concurrenceed to provide murals for the walls of the grand staircase and the second-floor corridor.(9) The space designated for Sargent's work was a lengthy vaulted hall with no windows upon the library's uppermost floor [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED]. Skylights in the barrel vault illuminated the play which measured 85 feet lengthy 24 feet wide, and 26 feet high at the peak of the vault. Along the east wall ran the balustraded stairwell; doors leading to special collections latitudes punctuated the two end walls to the north and southern and the west wall opposite the stairwell. Sargent would assume responsibility for decorating the entire third-floor gallery. He could thus treat the space as a unified artistic whole; he could manipulate to his liking a relatively self-contained visual environment.(10)

The library's trustees left the bring under rule matter of the murals to the discretion of the artist. Initially, Sargent intended to depict themes from Spanish literature. by the agency of mid-November 1890 he had changed his mind and culled instead a subject from the history of religion.(11) In official correspondence with the library he called the period "Triumph of Religion - a mural decoration illustrating certain stages of Jewish and Christian religious history."(12) As the throw out developed, Sargent's murals would require installation in four parts, spanning a period of twenty-four years, from 1895 to 1919 The to the full projected scheme [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED] was far grander and more compound than anything the artist attempted in after mural commissions. As Sargent noted in 1914 to Josiah Benton, president of the library's board of trustees, the decorative task was also a more demanding challenge than inexperience in the field had l him to anticipate.(13) above the course of the throw Sargent painted all of the panels upon canvas in England, accompanying them, after completion, to the United States to orchestrate and supervise their placement.