Author Interview: Paul Fisher's "The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World"
Welcome to a bonus episode of ArtCurious featuring my interview with Paul Fisher about his latest book, The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World.
An iconic American artist, John Singer Sargent was also a complicated and mysterious man. While presenting himself as a reserved, buttoned-up businessman, he scandalized viewers on both sides of the Atlantic with the frankness and sensuality of his work. 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 and that were left undiscovered until after Sargent’s death.
In his groundbreaking new biography, the scholar Paul Fisher offers a vivid life of the buttoned-up artist and his unbuttoned 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. Where did these feelings come from and how did they drive his art? Fisher paints a vivid picture of Sargent’s journeys and interior life. We follow him 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 Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and other aristocrats and eccentrics. Along the way, Sargent formed a close relationship with a lightweight boxer who became his model, valet, and traveling partner. In later years, he journeyed around the world with his friend and patron Isabella Stewart Gardner, and devoted himself to a new model, the African American elevator operator and part-time contortionist Thomas McKeller, who would become the subject of some of Sargent's most daring and powerful work. Masterfully researched and stunningly written, The Grand Affair brings back to life one of our most beloved artists and solidifies Fisher as a master of the genre.
About the author:
Paul Fisher is a professor of American studies at Wellesley College and the author of House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family and Artful Itineraries: European Art and American Careers in High Culture, 1865–1920. He helped organize the Gardner Museum’s pathbreaking 2020 exhibit Boston’s Apollo: Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent, and contributed to the exhibition catalog, which won the George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award for the best art history publication in 2020.
Please enjoy this bonus episode, featuring my discussion with Paul Fisher. Be sure to grab your copy of The Grand Affair from Bookshop.org, below. If you prefer Amazon, that link is below as well.
Please SUBSCRIBE and REVIEW our show on Apple Podcasts and FOLLOW on Spotify
Buy The Grand Affair here!
SPONSORS:
BetterHelp: Get 10% off your first month of counseling
The Barnes Foundation: For a limited time, get 10% off your first Barnes Class when you visit our link
Canvasprints.com: Get 25% off of your entire order of canvas prints, canvas wall displays, metal prints, photo tiles, photo blankets and pillows, and much more when you use code ARTCURIOUS25
Want to advertise/sponsor our show?
We have partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started.
