Portrait of Mrs. J.P. Morgan, Jr. (nee Jane Norton Grew), John Singer Sargent, oil on canvas, 58 x 36 inches (147 x 91 cm), in the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, NY.
The Morgan Library’s collection centers on rare books and manuscripts and a fantastic collection of old master drawings, but it does include a few paintings, and it’s fitting that this portrait of the founder’s wife should be one of them.
Sargent here displays his astonishing economy of notation. Look at the string of paint splotches that our eyes read as a golden chain, the seemingly simple brush marks that create swirls in the diaphanous fabric, or the gestural swoops of paint that make a graceful hand.
Not to mention the “whites” of her garments and how many subtle shifting colors Sargent has managed to let us see in them.
The boy could paint.