The Grand Affair

John Singer Sargent in His World

By: Paul Fisher

Narrated by: David de Vries

A great American artist, John Singer Sargent is an abiding enigma. He scandalized viewers with the frankness and sensuality of his work, while dressing like a businessman and crafting a highly respectable persona. He charmed the possessors of new money and old, while reserving his greatest sympathies for Bedouins, Spanish dancers, and the gondoliers of Venice. At the height of his renown in Britain and America, he quit his lucrative portrait-painting career to concentrate on allegorical murals with religious themes—and on nude drawings of male models that he kept to himself.

In The Grand Affair, scholar Paul Fisher offers a vivid life of the artist and his work. Sargent's nervy, edgy portraits exposed illicit or dark feelings in himself and his sitters—feelings that London, Paris, and New York high society was fascinated by yet kept at bay. Fisher traces Singer's life from his wandering trans-European childhood to the salons of Paris, and the scandals and enthusiasms he elicited, and on to London, where he mixed with other aristocrats and eccentrics, and formed a close relationship with a boxer who became his model, valet, and traveling partner.

Relating Sargent's restless itinerary, Fisher explores the enigmas of fin de siecle sexuality and art, fashioning a biography that grants the man and his paintings new and intense life.

©2022 Paul Fisher (P)2023 Tantor

John Singer Sargeant’s life is a tapestry

A brilliant artist who broke barriers in his portrayal of women and whose family and their travels made him bring to life natural landscapes such as the alps and modern cities. While known for his portraits, his legacy is both artistic and social commentary. This book is an incredible compendium of his artistic influences and the indelible mark left by his models on both the artist and society.

Squandered Scholarship

Undoubtedly erudite and scholarly. Unfortunately the author tries too hard to make Sargent’s sexuality relevant in some new or more profound way. Speculation and conjecture simply announce that the author is “trying too hard”. The word “queer”, now obviously in vogue, seemingly appears as frequently as the word “portrait”. So Sargent was probably gay. Congratulations.

Sargent's secret life

Excellent performance. Sargent remains a bit mysterious but this book adds him to pantheon of queer artists.

Not what I expected.

I was excited to listen to a biography about JSS but this was more of a book trying to prove his homosexuality. To me it wasn’t about his art but more about whether he was or wasn’t gay. He was a brilliant artist his sexuality shouldn’t matter.

confusing

the book was half about John Sargent and half about homosexuality in Victorian times.