Patrick Bade
Gilded Age Portraits

Patrick Bade - Gilded Age Portraits

- This is the famous ballroom of Mrs. Astor. In fact, it’s her second ballroom, the one that gave rise to the notion of the list of the 400 socially acceptable people, was an earlier version, smaller than this. In fact, this ballroom could accommodate 1,200 people. And it was at 840 Fifth Avenue. Everything about this room expresses opulence. It’s in the French Renaissance style that was so popular with the wealthiest people in America in the late 19th century. And you can see the walls are lined. It’s a very typical 19th century, pictures hanged frame to frame, floor to ceiling. And these are all pictures that would’ve been bought very, very expensively at the French Salon. We can see Orientalist pictures. We can see historical scenes. We can see typical salon nude, but somewhat discreetly seen from behind rather than frontal, and placed high up. So the prudish, the more prudish people would not have to be offended by it. They wouldn’t need have it on their eye level. So Mrs. Astor was the arbiter of society from the 1870s onwards, and the the famous list was compiled by a man called Ward McAllister. And the 400 people were those people who were thought to be socially acceptable at Mrs. Astor’s ball. And the list was actually published. And if you go on the internet, you can find the list. And it’s very interesting to see who’s on it, the sort of names on it. Of course, all WASP, they’re all white Anglo-Saxon wealthy people, no Jews, no Blacks, obviously, and no Catholics, I would think. But it was an idea that there were just these 400 people who were socially acceptable in New York. It was an idea that wasn’t liked by everybody. It was much mocked.

And Ward McAllister was caricatured, as you can see here. There’s a side to American, New York high society that was incredibly snobbish, I must say. It was an aspect of America, which I did come across sometimes when I used to work for Christie’s, a kind of snobbishness that’s almost a caricature of the worst kind of British snobbishness. And here is a caricature of Ward McAllister with ass’s ears. Obviously, the commentator doesn’t think much of him, and he’s trying to transform an American into a posh Englishman. The great chronicler of all of this, the Gilded Age in New York, is Edith Wharton. Here she is on the left, one of her most famous books, “The Age of Innocence.” I’ve just been looking at the covers of her novels. Very often in paperback editions, they have of course, portraits of the Gilded Age. This is Sargent’s Lady Astor. So here is, again, Mrs. Astor’s mansion, incredibly, incredibly lavish with the finest craftsman imported from Europe. Everything was the most expensive it could possibly be, but like nearly all these mansions, it actually had a very short life, only a generation. It was completed in 1896 and demolished in 1926. Here is her son, John Jacob Astor, dressed up for one of her balls. He’s actually dressed in 16th century costume that went rather well with the decor. Here is the staircase where people could make a grand descent. Now this is this man he’s known as Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. And he was the creator of the Vanderbilt fortune that was based largely on railways. And the Vanderbilts were reputed to be the wealthiest family in America in the Gilded Age.

And between them, they owned 10 of these magnificent mansions on Fifth Avenue, all of which have since been demolished. This is Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt dressed up for these balls. She really took over from Mrs. Astor as the great arbiter of New York society. And this is her palace on Fifth Avenue. The Vanderbilt not only had these 10 palaces in Central New York on Fifth Avenue, they had numerous splendid houses around the country, some of which survive. I suppose magnificent is Biltmore, which was built between 1889 and 1895, again, in the French Renaissance style, for George Washington Vanderbilt. It was an enormous enterprise. Over a thousand workers were involved in the building of the house and 60 specialist stonemasons. So the very highest quality of European craftsmanship. And here are two portraits of him by Whistler, on the left-hand side, and Sargent on the right. This is a little cottage, in American billionaire terms of the period. This is The Breakers at Newport in Rhode Island. And you can see how absolutely over-the-top sumptuous it is in its interior. So you have this wealth, you don’t want to hide it, you want to show it off. If you have it, show it. And this is even on the slightly, not on the very highest level of wealth. There’s still masses of wealth in the Gilded Age. It’s the period where America is booming, it’s expanding. It actually overtakes Britain as the leading industrial and economic nation in the world by the end of the 19th century. And so all over America, you find these splendid wedding cake houses of the Gilded Age, as flamboyantly opulent as possible.

So these people, these very wealthy Americans, they were very cosmopolitan and they travelled to, in particular, to Europe. And this is the beginning of the great age of ocean-liner travel that reaches its peak, I suppose, between the wars with ships like the Normandie and the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth. But this Mauretania, this was launched in 1909. This is one luxury liner you didn’t want to be on. This is the Titanic that, as you know, encountered an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912. And it took down with it John Jacob Astor, who we’ve just seen, I suppose he was the wealthiest, most socially prominent victim of the Titanic disaster. And this is, as I said, you could travel again in great elegance and opulence and style. This is a drawing room from the Mauretania. Once you’ve got this American aristocracy, I think we can say once they arrived in Europe, they continue to live in great style in grand hotels. A relatively recent development, really only going back to the middle of the 19th century, these luxury hotels. And this would’ve been their hotel of choice in London before the first World War. This is The Savoy, which had opened in the 1880s with an unheard-of level of luxury, including, scandalously, en suite bathrooms for every room. When the hotel opened, the English newspapers, as I said, they were quite scandalised and people saying, “What could be going on in this hotel "that they need so many bathrooms?” And then of course you would want to take the channel ferry and the railway, and Paris would’ve been a next stop for the American wealthy of the period. This is the restaurant of Bois de Boulogne. And this is Le Train Bleu restaurant at the Gare de Lyon, where you would have a little light refreshment or lunch perhaps before setting off on the Blue Train for the Cote d'Azur, which is another very important stop in the itinerary of the Gilded Age.

This is Nice and the Promenade des Anglais and the Hotel Negresco in Nice, which still exists. Notice the dome, and this is the Carlton at Cannes, there is some dispute, really, about which domes were inspired by this of them were, actually. This is one of the most celebrated grandes horizontales of the Gilded Age. This is La Belle Otero, who, amongst her clients, she had the czar of Russia, various grand dukes, the Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, king of Belgium, king of Spain, prince of Wales and many others. But also American tycoons of the Gilded Age, who had spent a fortune for a night in her bed. And she was very proud of her magnificent breasts. And they were, apparently, they say, the inspiration for these domes in the hotel Carlton. Now this is a period where, of course, they’re great collectors. Think of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Frick, Huntington, and so on. They’re all collecting, and they’re very keen to buy English portraits of the 18th century. And the competition for these portraits was so keen that they went for, in real terms, absolutely absurd sums of money that they wouldn’t have been a very good investment. This Gainsborough, “The Blue Boy,” which was sold by the Duke of Westminster through Duveen, I think it was, to Huntington, was at that point, I think, the most expensive painting ever sold. So Gainsborough certainly, they’d be a lot of money today, but they wouldn’t have held that kind of value. It was the snob appeal of these portraits for new rich Americans who are in a sense buying ancestors when they bought these portraits.

And this is the man who did it all, or who arranged all these deals and who hugely elevated the price of English 18th century portraits. This is Sir Joseph Duveen. And I know I’ve mentioned several times before, this excellent book that came out last year by Charles Dellheim called “Belonging and Betrayal,” which is about all these dealers of the Gilded Age who were, all the prominent dealers were Jewish. And so he, in that… Oh, here is, of course, the Frick Collection, which is also full of Reynolds and Gainsborough and other English portraits of the late 18th and early 19th century. And Charles Dellheim tells a story in his book that had me laughing out loud when I read it, about Duveen selling this wonderful double portrait by Van Dyke of two members of the Stuart royal family. It’s Lord George and Lord Bernard Stuart. It now actually hangs in the National Gallery. And I always have fun with it, ‘cause they are the archetypal English posh boys. So I always describe them as being David Cameron and George Osborne. But so Duveen, or rather Frick bought this picture from Duveen, but Mrs. Frick didn’t like it. And she insisted on her husband giving it back to Duveen on the grounds that the boys had noses that looked Jewish noses. And she certainly didn’t want to have pictures on the wall that might suggest that she had Jewish ancestors. So that was the reason they gave to Duveen, rather insulting, considering that he was himself, of course, Jewish. So sadly, all their wealth couldn’t buy them their own portraits by Reynolds and Gainsborough, so they had to go to contemporaries. And probably the man who might be described as the prototype of the Gilded Age portraitist was the French artist Carolus-Duran. You can see his signature at the top there. The name sounds rather posh, but it wasn’t his real name.

His real name was Charles Durand, with a D on the end, which is a rather plebeian, common name. So he changed it to make it sound a little bit more classy. So you see his self portrait and there he’s looking very grand in his luxurious studio, where many of the leading members of Gilded Age society went to have their portraits painted. He’s a very slick, brilliant artist. And you can see why he went down well, 'cause it’s a cocktail, really, a sophisticated combination of rather slick academic technique with very brilliant modern brushwork. And he was a great friend of Manet and the technique here, you can see the face of this woman is really rather smooth and blandly painted like a Salon painting. But the brushwork in her clothing is full of bravura rather in the manner of Manet. This is Carolus-Duran’s portrait of Mrs. Astor, and looking very grand and looking very 17th century. Her corseted shape, of course is late 19th century, but the lace collar and the sleeves and the style of the dress are really from the period of Van Dyck. Here’s a rather more modern portrait of another American woman, but not so grand socially. This was an American artist called Lucy Lee-Robbins, who actually went, many of these very wealthy people went to Paris if they had artistic as aspirations, they enrolled as pupils of the famous French artists. And she enrolled as a pupil of Carolus-Duran. Here is Carolus-Duran painted by his most famous and successful pupil, John Singer Sargent. And this actually was the painting that first gained Sargent notice at the Paris Salon.

He had arrived in Paris in 1774. As I said, he enrolled in the studio of Carolus-Duran. And this was, this painting was made both as a sort of homage to his master, but also, Sargent was always really, he was clever and calculating in promoting himself. And I think he knew that making this portrait of his famous teacher would be a very good move to ingratiate himself with French critics and French society. This is one of his earliest portraits of the children of a very prominent Boston family, the Boit family. It’s interesting that in this period, very wealthy people would be more likely to entrust the portraits of their children to a younger or lesser known artist. Renoir had a brief phase trying to be a society portraitist had the same kind of experience. That wealthy people, they would go to Carolus-Duran or one of the more established artists, but they were happy to entrust their children to a younger talent. As I said, Sargent was very calculating in the way he promoted himself and the way he followed his career. And as a society portraitist in the Gilded Age, what you needed to do was to paint the so-called portrait of the year, either at the Royal Academy in London or at the Salon in Paris. And this was the portrait that everybody was talking about and that everybody had to go and see. And if you were the subject of the portrait of the year, you were socially made, because everybody wanted to invite you to dinner, to look at you and compare you to your portrait. And if you were the author of the portrait of the year, your career was made, 'cause people would flock to you and you could charge whatever prices you wanted. So it had to be something that would really stand out. And when Sargent painted this picture of Madam Gautreau, who was an American society beauty who married into a French family, he spotted her at a social occasion.

She had very striking looks. She used very heavy makeup. And he described her her skin as having a colour of lavender blotting paper. And she hennaed her hair. And as he put it, she had marvellous lines, her profile, her contours. So you can see that really in this picture, that he’s posed her to display her beautiful contours. And when the picture was first exhibited, rather daring, of course, it’s a very, very low cut dress. And he painted her with, what’s the word for it? There’s a phrase, isn’t there? But when you have an accident with your clothing. And one of the straps, the left strap, here as we are looking at it, had dropped off her shoulder, putting her in danger of an even more serious accident and the exposure of her right breast. Now I’ve never quite… Obviously Sargent was trying to be a bit provocative. He was trying to… What he really wanted was succes de scandale, a scandalous success. But all he achieved actually was a scandal, not the success. And the painting was pilloried and caricatured. And it actually put an end to his ambition to be the leading society portraitist of Paris. And soon afterwards, in the wake of the scandal, he moved to London. Here he is in his , you can see, of course, Mrs. Gautreau did not want her portrait, so he kept it, and it was in his studio in Tite Street in London. And the inset here is a caricature by Max Beerbohm of the great and the good and the wealthy, attended by bellboys and so on, all queuing up outside Sargent’s studio to have their portraits painted. It took him some time, but in 1892, he painted this picture of Lady Agnew. That was his first portrait of the year. It was an absolute sensation.

And then thereafter, from 1892 until he gave up taking portrait commissions in 1907, every year, Sargent painted the portrait of the year in London at the Royal Academy. And he also then had considerable success in Paris too. So that meant he could charge 5,000 pounds for a portrait in an immense, immense sum of money at the time. And he was a quick worker, so he could paint more than 20 portraits a year. So he certainly was raking it in with these portraits. Lady Agnew, in a way, is the prototype for a great many of the female portraits of the Gilded Age, the Belle Epoque, whatever you want to call it. She is in a very relaxed pose. It has a certain languorous sense of relaxation and intimacy. She’s sitting in a bergere, 18th century. It’s a Louis Quinze style chair. And you also have this wonderfully rich, opulent, exotic fabric. Chinese or Japanese, I’m not sure which, in the background. So this becomes a kind of standard formula for, this is the Spanish artist, Sorolla, who also did quite a few portraits of the wealthy at this period. You can see him following… Sargent, his supremacy was so absolute, rather like Rubens in the 17th century, that he simply didn’t need to be jealous of anybody else. And it’s interesting how he seems to have gone on very well with all the artists, he was friend of Sorolla, they exchanged works with one another, with all his rivals and imitators. This is probably his closest rival, an extraordinarily gifted artist in the same way that Sargent is. This is the Swedish artist Anders Zorn. And you can see once again, she’s sitting on a 18th century settee with an exotic Japanese or Chinese background.

And the same formula also that had been pioneered by Carolus-Duran of references to 18th century painting, a basically academic technique, but modernised with this very free and sensuous and sumptuous brushwork. Now the chairs, the chairs. This is the salon in the house of Mrs…. No, I’m afraid I’ve got… When I was researching this lecture, I got so muddled with all the Vanderbilts and the Astors, and I’m actually trying to remember… This is the the Petit Chateau. No, it’s built for the Vanderbilts, that’s right, on Fifth Avenue. And you can see it’s in a style that’s always favoured by the very rich. It’s a style that has been, well, there are lots of very rude names for this style that I won’t go into. But the least rude one is tous les Louis, all the Louis. And you can see that the furniture, with the cabriole legs, is all Louis Quinze. But whereas the boiserie and the ceiling seem to be more, Louis Seize, a more classical style. So it’s a blend of the different 18th century French styles. Two more Sargents in which he uses a similar formula, and the inevitable Louis Quinze bergere as a prop. And this is another rival of Sargent, the man who really probably benefited most from Sargent’s absence from Paris. This is the Italian Giovanni Boldini. And from the 1880s up to the 1900s, up to the first World War, he would have been the portraitist of choice for very wealthy Americans coming to Paris. This, in fact, the lady on the left is Cuban, although she was a leading society figure in New York. This is Rita de Acosta. And he painted a great many portraits of her. So again, we notice that, well, she has Louis Seize chairs with straight fluted legs. And the lady on the right-hand side, who is American, but I can’t remember her name, you can see she has, again, the Louis Quinze with the curving elements.

And talking of curving elements, both ladies, of course, are extremely curvaceous. And that we’re in the period, this is end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century. This is the period of Art Nouveau, which is characterised by its curvilinearity. And it’s the period where women do everything possible to accentuate the curves of the female body with the help of padding and corsets and also how they pose. You can see that both these women are posed to accentuate all the curves of the female body. And this is another wonderful Boldini, this time actually of a European princess, a Romanian princess, Marthe Bibesco. And you can see once again, she’s on a Louis Quinze settee or sofa. And her whole body is twisted to bring out these curves. This is Nancy Astor as a young woman. She’s a very, a beautiful young woman. And Sargent has posed her, actually, well, unconsciously, I’m sure, but in exactly the same pose that La Belle Otero has taken to emphasise her curves. So here are the two main rivals of Sargent, Anders Zorn on the left-hand side and Giovanni Boldini on the right-hand side. And Boldini, he’s from Florence. He arrived in Paris after the war of 1870, and established himself there, initially painting Parisian modern life, street scenes and so on. And it was only in the 1880s that he really took off as a society portraitist, largely of women. There are a couple of very remarkable male portraits by him. There’s two of Verdi, they’re the most famous images of Verdi. There’s a wonderful, one called the Montesquiou. But he was obviously very, himself, obsessed with feminine beauty. He was actually a very ugly man. But he apparently had success with women through his charm and through his ability to flatter, I suppose, as an artist. He’s not a great colorist, as you can see here. These are almost monochromatic pictures compared… Sargent, of course, is a absolutely sumptuous and gorgeous colorist and revels in the rich colours of the costumes of the period.

But you usually find with Boldini that the paintings will be almost in a Whistlerian sense, a symphony in one particular colour or tone. And the most interesting characteristic of the paintings of Boldini is the brushwork. It’s very brilliant, very flashy brushwork, I think, inspired partly by the brushwork of Franz Hals. This is again, Rita de Acosta with her second husband, setting out for a walk, promenade, in the Bois de Boulogne. And this is Boldini, but who is it? Let me just see if I’ve got it in a note, Boldini, Boldini… This is Mrs. Whitney Warren. And again, she’s got a very, very decollete dress, rather daring, one would’ve thought, for a New York society matron. And as as usual, seated on Louis Quinze furniture. And again, the body twisted to accentuate the curves. It’s very interesting to be able to make direct comparisons. Somebody could do a good exhibition, I think, on this, on Gilded Age portraits or Belle Epoque portraits. And, because they’re very wealthy people, could afford to go to more than one or even several of these artists. So there are many examples where we can see the same person, usually the same woman painted by Boldini, by Anders Zorn, by Sorolla, and by Sargent. And this is Betty Wertheimer, a very famous portrait of Betty and her sister, Ena, by Sargent, on the right-hand side, that was shown at the Royal Academy and got very nasty, antisemitic comments in the reviews of the period, I think one critic said this was a very brilliant portrait of two examples of a nasty racial type or words of that kind. And so here you can see, can’t you, that it is the same woman. The woman on the left in the red dress is Betty Wertheimer.

And on the image on the left, it’s the same woman, also very daringly decollete, very sexy, by Boldini. And here again, there are several portraits of her by Sargent. Sargent made 12 portraits of members of the Wertheimer family who were actually British rather than American. But here it is again, Betty Wertheimer by Sargent on the right-hand side and by Boldini on the left. And notice both of them use this device of a twisted pose. Now who is this? This is a painting by Anders Zorn. Let me see if I’ve got it here. Boldini, Zorn, yes, this is William B. Ogden, who’s of course a very posh East Coast American, by Anders Zorn. And so this is Mrs. Potter Palmer, who was a leading socialite, or she was sort of the equivalent of Mrs. Astor, but for Chicago. And this, well, a little test for you here. I love to do these little tests, but I will give you the answer, don’t worry. She’s Mrs. Walter Bacon, but she was actually a member of the Vanderbilt family. She was a granddaughter of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. And we see her painted by Sargent and by Anders Zorn. So which do you think is which? They’re in a very, very similar manner, aren’t they? Well, actually it’s Sargent on the left and Anders Zorn on the right. And here again, in fact this is two portraits of her by Anders… No, no, no, it’s, this is, sorry, this is Anders Zorn on the right-hand side and Sargent on the left-hand side. And actually in this case, I think, I would give the, I think, the portrait of her with the dog is so delightful. I think I would go for the Anders Zorn rather than the Sargent, and again, you can always tell, I think, when a portraitist has an affinity with a sitter, you can see it very, very clearly in Sargent’s work. And of course there’s always a certain level of brilliance or certainly competence in anything that Sargent paints. But you can always tell whether he, I think, likes the person, or at least finds them interesting or is engaged with them.

And this is actually, this is Zorn again, and this is Mrs. Walter Bacon, but I’m sure that he liked… The fact that he did three portraits of her already speaks for that. But I get a real sense of empathy or sympathy, that you feel that you are involved in a conversation with her, and it’s an agreeable conversation that you are having with her. This is Isabella Stewart Gardner, and a formal portrait that was commissioned from Sargent on the left-hand side, that’s in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. And it’s because it’s a very formal composition, really, isn’t it? With a sort of almost abstract repetition of circular forms in the picture, including her amazing pearl belt and necklace and the background. And the painting on the right-hand side is, perhaps not really fair to compare these two, 'cause they’re so different. It’s a painting by Anders Zorn of Isabella Stewart Gardner in her palazzo in Venice. And he, Zorn, was a guest in her palazzo, and there was a firework display on the Grand Canal, which they’re all watching. And he’s caught a moment. So it’s a a sketch rather than a formal finished portrait, like the Sargent, where she’s been watching the firework display and she turns around to speak to her guests and has a wonderful freshness and spontaneity. So I think a probably a fairer comparison between Sargent and Zorn would be, there’s an oil sketch by Zorn on the right-hand side, and it’s a watercolour on the left by Sargent of Isabella Stewart Gardner, somewhat older and perhaps unwell or recovering from an illness, I’m not sure.

So this is Consuelo Vanderbilt, who is the daughter of Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt. Later after her divorce, she became Mrs. Belmont, her mother, And of course it’s a very famous story, been books about it. I’m sure you are familiar with the story of her mother in effect forced her, used incredible methods of pressure to make Consuelo marry the Duke of Marlborough. And it was much commented on at the time that it was really an unholy trade between the new rich Americans with their immense, immense wealth. These people were in real terms, richer than any people who’d ever walked on the planet. And probably that’s probably still the case. And so they were all these… They’d made their money in railways or the Vanderbilts was even in, I think it was the opium trade as well as railways and property and things like that. And what they craved was social recognition, desperately, hence these palaces that they built on Fifth Avenue and buying the ancestral portraits and commissioning these portraits that I’m talking about tonight. And the best way, for them, to get social recognition, of course was to marry into the European aristocracy and get a title for your daughter. So these, it was often a very kind of crude deal, definitely was with the Dukes of Marlborough, had run into debt in the late 19th century. They’d had to sell off many of their paintings, their Old Master paintings through Duveen and so on to these people.

And so it was a contract, it was a deal. So poor Consuelo had to marry this very boring English aristo, who wasn’t in love with her. They weren’t in love with one another, but she got the title. Her mother and family got the social recognition, and the duke got his debts paid. Of course it was a marriage that didn’t last. And she did eventually she left him and she did find happiness with another man. But she was a striking beauty. And you can see I’ve talked before about Sargent, an all-flattering portraitist, the device of adding a couple of inches to the neck, and fact Sargent, when he asked her, when she posed for this picture, not to wear necklaces or anything around the neck, 'cause he wanted to expose her swan’s neck. And as you can see from the rather sad photograph of poor Consuelo with all her duchess gear and her coronet and all that stuff, she actually really did have a pretty amazingly long neck, even without the help of Sargent. Here she is painted by Carolus-Duran. That would also have been a very, very expensive commission. And by Helleu, Paul Helleu, who was primarily, I suppose, a graphic artist. His best work is as an etcher. But this is… Actually, I’m not sure what this is. I think it might be a pastel. I don’t think it’s an oil painting, but it’s a portrait of Consuelo by Paul Helleu. On the left-hand side is Helleu himself with his wife, who’s the chief inspiration for much of his best work. Also a very beautiful woman. Helleu was a great appreciator of elegant and beautiful women. So it’s a portrait of Helleu and his wife by Sargent on the left-hand side and a portrait of Consuelo Vanderbilt by Helleu on the right. And two more portraits of her by Helleu. I think that’s an etching on the left-hand side. I’m not sure actually if it’s a drawing or an etching, actually. And it’s a pastel again on the right-hand side. And a watercolour of Consuelo by Boldini on the right-hand side. So she did the rounds of all these artists and two more portraits, I think, with Boldini too there. When he really liked a sitter and she really turned him on, he would do multiple portraits. I’m not sure if they paid for all of these.

So this is Consuelo with her, 'cause there there’s a famous comment that later repeated about Diana and her two sons, that she produced the heir and the spare before she left her husband. So here you can see her with the older son. Again, the usual 18th century furniture and the twisting curvaceous pose. And that’s a detail of Boldini who’s also clearly relishing her enormously long neck. This is an a friend of Consuelo’s who was another very wealthy American young woman, very beautiful, called Gladys Deacon. She was very intelligent, very witty, spoke German and French perfectly. And so she followed in the footsteps of Consuelo in the hope also of finding a titled husband, and made a great impact in high society in Europe, particularly in Paris. Hugo von Hofmannsthal said her conversation was so scintillating, so dazzling, brilliant, it was almost shocking. And Gabriele d'Annunzio was also very much in love with her. Well, she got her duke, because once Consuelo had offloaded the Duke of Marlborough, Gladys Deacon took him on. That also turned out to be a very unhappy, very disastrous marriage. And she was famous for her almost perfect Greek nose. And it really bothered her that it was only almost perfect. She wanted it to be perfect. And she made the terrible mistake of having some very early rather unsophisticated plastic surgery on the nose that went horribly wrong. And people noted that her conversation, which previously had been thought to be brilliant and witty, when her face was distorted, people took her remarks very differently and they no longer found her charming.

They found her actually rather scary. This is Jennie Jerome, another one of these American society women who came to Europe looking for an aristocratic husband. And she married Randolph Churchill, and of course is the mother of Winston Churchill. And here she’s on the left by a French society painter called Boulanger, who’s popular and successful at the time. And a very dazzling charcoal drawing by Sargent on the right-hand side. And who is this? This is Gladys Vanderbilt, who married a Hungarian aristocrat. So she became Countess Szechenyi. And there she’s painted by Sargent. Men, now Sargent and Boldini, I would say, are generally less interested in their male sitters, at least the ones that come from the top echelons of society. This is Theodore Roosevelt by Sargent, Henry Clay Frick by Sargent. Boring, they’re boring pictures compared with all the dazzling pictures of women that I’ve been showing you. This is… Which Vanderbilt is this? I don’t know, but it’s a boring person painted by Sargent, some, I think it’s George Washington. Is it Vanderbilt? I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s not somebody I think who really got Sargent’s creative juices going. This pair, I think, is a bit different. This is the Mr. And Mrs. Phelps Stokes. And this is, I think one of, I think Sargent really does like these people and he finds them interesting and he finds them probably sexy and glamorous as well. 'Cause although Phelps Stokes came from a very wealthy family, so he’s certainly from this gilded society, he was a successful architect. And you don’t feel that he’s one of these really boring society people. And his wife too is…

They both look like giants, don’t they? I dunno how tall they actually were, and she has this… 'Cause American women coming to Europe, they made a great impression, because they were much bolder. They were, well, these women from this kind of class, they were much more confident and much more free and easy in their manners. And I think that comes across in this picture. And she has a a slightly masculine quality, doesn’t she? With these huge padded shoulders. This is, Sargent, I think it’s fairly clear that Sargent was homosexual. He paints very sympathetic portraits of women. But I think often, maybe in a way that gay men are often more sensitive and sympathetic to women than straight men are. That’s a huge generalisation that you may wish to shoot down. But I think that does come across in Sargent’s portraits that, when he is engaged with them, he’s really interested in these women as human beings. As far as the male portraits are concerned, he’s obviously really switched on by handsome young artists, handsome young men. These are typical examples. And this, I think, he probably fancied this very good looking young priest. Certainly paints him with a lot more sympathy and a lot more interest than he does Henry Clay Flake or Theodore Roosevelt. And so Sargent is of course a member of this Gilded Age aristocracy. He was born into a wealthy expatriate family. They had enough money just to live a wonderful life of leisure out of the pages of Edith Wharton or Henry James. He was born in Florence. He was very cosmopolitan, trilingual, and lived this peripatetic life of luxury and comfort. I love this little picture on the left-hand side of… You can see, he’s just arrived in his hotel room somewhere in Italy.

Not a hotel where they have en suite bathrooms, of course, 'cause you can see… I can remember the first time I went to Florence, staying in a hotel where there were no basins and no running water in the room, was only one bathroom in the hotel that you had to book. And they would bring they would bring a bowl and ewer full of hot water to your room every morning for you to carry out your ablutions. And that’s what we can see in this picture. And so Sargent, once he’s given up taking these formal portrait commissions, he continues to paint his friends and members of the elegant American society travelling around Europe as that’s what we see here on the right-hand side. And he certainly great recorder, like Edith Wharton, he’s a great recorder of the lifestyle of the Gilded Age. And that’s it, thank you. And I see we’ve got some comments and questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Oh, that’s Hannah. You are commenting on Wendy’s comment about the demonstration today, 150,000 people. It’s good to know that, really, it’s reassuring. Location of the Astor mansion. There were two Astor mansions, the one which had the ballroom at the 400, they’re both on Fifth Avenue, but the one that I showed you is 840 Fifth Avenue. But none of those mansions survived. It’s incredible to think of the amount of wealth and money that was pumped into those mansions in the late 19th century, and none of them lasted more than a generation. Yes, well, I suppose they were… By the 1920s, those houses would’ve looked very old fashioned. They would’ve been completely demode and nobody would’ve been concerned about trying to save them.

Q: Mauretania, is that the same ship though? Or is it another ship with the same name that you travelled on?

A: I would be surprised if a ship from '99 was still in service in 1946. But perhaps you’re right. As you say, it was not built for the tropics.

This is Betty saying she’s going to the Vanderbilt estate in North Carolina, right. Goodness, that is a rather expensive visit. This is Monty saying his impression of present New York is still full of affluent snobs and their hangers-on, yes. Maybe I don’t… It’s been a while since I’ve been to New York. This is Janet, who is also a passenger on the Mauretania in 1953, yes. Maybe we could do a little research on that on the internet and see if it’s the same ship. Sometimes when a ship is decommissioned, another ship will be given its name. The title of the book is by Charles Dellheim, and it’s called “Belonging and Betrayal.” And it’s about the role that Jews played in the art trade during this period. Yes, there were some, but there I think the really, the important dealers were nearly all Jewish there.

Of course, what’s the name of… Yes, Durand-Ruel. They were not Jewish, actually, that’s true. But they’re a bit earlier, their important period. Wardrobe malfunction, that was the phrase I was looking for, thank you. The black dress looks like the one that Diana wore at the White House.

Q: Who names the portrait of the year?

A: It was, I think, a general consensus of the critics. It wasn’t a formal thing, but it was usually pretty, well, once Sargent had painted Lady Agnew, it was a kind of given that it was going to be him.

Oh, good, I’m always… There have been a lot of Sargent exhibitions, but I could never get enough, really, he’s such a wonderful artist. The Rijksmuseum did a high society from various periods. Yes, there was one in London at the Tate, must be 20 years ago now, that was called Swagger Portraits, that actually compared portraits of different periods, not just this period. But I thought it would be interesting to have a portrait comparing different artists painting the same person. That you think that Zorn catches the movement. Well, yes, that little Gardner portrait in Venice is a fabulous thing. It was just that…

Q: Why were those mansions razed?

A: Well, I think that part, all the wealthy people had moved up, New York changed so rapidly in that period. They’d all moved further uptown. And it became a sort of commercial area rather than a fashionable residential area.

Thank you, Lorna. Yes, well, I think there are many, many more portraits of women than there are of men and they tend to be more interesting. As I said, a lot of the male portraits are really quite boring. Did Augustus John, I don’t think he eclipsed Sargent, because he was very successful in the interwar period. You could say in a way that he was one of the artists who stepped into Sargent’s shoes. But Sargent’s shoes were big ones, and nobody else after him really had quite such a monopoly on fashionable portraiture.

And that’s a very good point, Jill, that of course, that the men are not as interestingly dressed, as Baudelaire said in a generation earlier, that men in the 19th century were all dressed as though for a funeral.

Hillary’s, she recommends “Husband Hunters: "American Heiresses Who Married "into the British Aristocracy.” There was a very nice little exhibition about that at the National Portrait Gallery. It must be about six or seven years ago. Primogeniture would’ve kept British society from buying husbands for their daughters. It seems that the Americans were willing to spend lots of money away from their sons to get a title in the family, yes, indeed.

Q: Were those women in black in the second-to-last photo wearing mosquetaire?

A: Yes, they were.

This is Cheryl, my friend Cheryl, saying she’s very much enjoyed, she endorses my recommendation of Charles Dellheim’s wonderful book. It’s a great read and it’s very amusing as well as very informative. Thank you, Ruth.

Ruth, do you really think that? I hope not, that people would… I don’t think, people might make antisemitic comments, but I don’t think they’d make that kind of comment, that would… 'Cause people who are antisemitic today don’t see themselves as racist. I know that’s a big contradiction, but, so they wouldn’t say something like, “a loathsome racial type.” I think that is a kind of antisemitism that probably has largely disappeared, at least among educated people. Yes, a very super… Oh, but yes, I suppose they did, but there were women who led very interesting lives and took advantage of the freedom that they had compared to less wealthy women.

“Gilded Age” on Crave. I dunno what, Julian… Somebody else mentioned that to me. I don’t have TV, unfortunately.

Q: When did photographic portraiture begin?

A: It began in the 1840s and was initially, of course, it took a while before photography could catch up with painting in presenting a more flattering image. So Julia Margaret Cameron in the 1860s would’ve been the beginning of that.

Why of Zorn’s oeuvre go to Gothenburg Museum? I’d never been to there, but would very, very keen on Zorn, would like to see more of his work. Painting of Mr. and Mrs. Phelps Stokes was originally supposed to be only Mrs. Phelps Stokes and her Great Dane, but the dog became sick and unavailable. That’s a nice little detail. So husband was a substitute for the dog.

Right, thank you all very, very much. I’m off to Paris on Tuesday, so I’ll speak to you from my Paris apartment on Wednesday evening. Thank you, bye-bye, bye.