Clementina Anstruther-Thomson (1889)

Oil on canvas. 42” x 29 1/8.”

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No. 216 in John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray.

Exhibitions: London, RA, 1890, no. 652, as “Mrs K”; Taft Museum of Art

Provenance: Presented by the artist to the sitter; her brother, Major Anstruther Gray; his son, Sir William Anstruther Gray, now Lord Kilmany; sold by him, Christie’s, New York, 11 December 1981, lot 93, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Cohen.

Literature About This Painting

From John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits, by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, p. 220-221:

Clementina Anstruther–Thomson (1857-1921), known as “Kit,” was the daughter of John Anstruther-Thomson and his wife Maria Hamilton Gray (whose mother was the historian Caroline Johnstone). A prosperous landed family, they lived at Charlton, Fife, in Scotland. In the later 1880s, Kit became the inseparable companion and protégé of Vernon Lee, with whom she lived for a number of years. Whereas Vernon Lee was very much an intellectual, Kit was large and physical, a keen huntswoman (her father was master of Pytchley, Atherstone, and Fife hounds) and socializer, as well as a devotee of art and literature. The two women collaborated on a number of essays on aesthetics, beginning with Beauty and Ugliness in 1897, in which Vernon Lee’s theoretical analysis was supplemented by the observations of her friend before specific works of art.

It was as Vernon Lee's friend that Kit came to visit Sargent at Fladbury Rectory in August 1889. In the middle of the month, Vernon Lee went off to stay with another friend in Yorkshire, writing home on 24 August: I thought it more polite to her to go alone for a week first, so much to Kit's annoyance I left her at the S.s who are tremendously anxious she should stay & have some lessons from John' (Vernon Lee's Letters 1937, pp. 310-11). Four days later she wrote with some asperity:

Kit has been detained at Fladbury by John suddenly taking it into his head to paint a huge picture of her for next Academy or Salon. I believe it is very grand, but I wish he had thought of it before. Of course she could not refuse to stay on and pose as they have been so very kind to us both. But I miss her very much ... I fancy Kit will come early next week. Emily [Sargent] writes that she [Kit] is very anxious to get to me; but I have begged her to stay, so as neither to hurry the picture nor to weary her back by over long sittings.

Emily had, in fact, written to plead Sargent's case on 24 August 1889, describing the picture and asking whether Miss Thomson might stay on for a few days so that Sargent could finish the picture:

John has begun a large picture of Miss T. She has on her fur cape, shepherd's hat, & grey dress, & is standing on the grass with a back ground [sic] of a yew tree, & the side steps leading up to the house - just where you used sometimes to write, when Flora was painting. Miss T. looks splendid, & John is tremendously interested. (Colby College, Maine).

Quixotic and unusual as a characterization, the portrait verges on caricature. While the outdoor walking costume and rather masculine attitude may have been characteristic of Kit, who was, like Vernon Lee, argumentative and doctrinaire, it is difficult to know how the artist expected an audience unfamiliar with his subject to read the image. As an outdoor study, it should perhaps be judged as an experimental work.

The slight cropping of the inscription on the left suggests that the picture may have been cut down and altered after exhibition. An oil study (no. 217) shows the figure whole length, with more surrounding space, a wider view of the rectory on the right, and a hedge with stables beyond on the left.

At the Royal Academy, the titles of Kit's portrait and that of Mrs. Kissam (no. 210) were confused in the catalogue, the former appearing as 'Mrs K'. It was regarded askance by the critics, a 'shocking eccentricity' as the Magazine of Art (1890, p. 258) dubbed it.

There is some craquelure in the area above the sitter's head.

There are two drawings of the same date, one inscribed 'A Vernon Aug. 1889' and a second, in which she is dressed as one of the ladies in Titian's Sacred and Profane Love. The latter is in the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin.

Biography

(American, b. 1856 - d. 1925) 

Born in Florence, Italy to an American doctor and his wife, John Singer Sargent became a leading portrait and figure painter of subjects in international society during the Gilded Age. Late in his career, he was a leading proponent of watercolor as a respectable medium for finished work. 

His parents were American expatriates who lived in Europe most of their lives and followed the social season between the capital cities. Traveling continuously with his parents, Sargent showed early artistic talent, which was encouraged by his mother, who was an amateur painter. In Rome at age 12, he studied with Carl Welsch, a German-American artist and in 1870 at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. In Paris, he was accepted in 1874 at the Ecole des Beaux Arts but switched to the less academically oriented atelier of Carolus Duran, who had major impact on Sargent's style. Duran was an adventurous portrait painter who blended realism with a certain freedom of style. 

Sargent was also affected by portrait style of Velasquez, the Tonalism or mood painting of James Whistler, and Impressionism of Edgar Degas. He spent time at Monet's home town of Giverny, absorbing Impressionist techniques there.

Sargent's career ended in Paris with his painting "Portrait of Mme X," 1884, because it was a startlingly accurate portrayal of a notoriously beautiful woman who was Sargent's cousin. Some said the pose was provocative, but aside from the reputation of the subject, there seems little reason from a late 20th century perspective to find the work controversial. 

From 1885 until 1925, Sargent lived primarily in London where his career as a portrait painter was highly successful, but he traveled frequently to the United States where he also had many portrait commissions, especially from upper class Bostonians. However by 1908, he was expressing much tiredness with the demands on his talents and the need to flatter his subjects. He began to limit himself to charcoal portrait sketches and also painted murals. In the early 1890s, he began a twenty-five year mural project for the Boston Public Library and painted murals at the Widener Library. 

In July 1918, he became a part of the War Artists Memorial Committee of the British Ministry of Information and went to France, in the vicinity of Bavincourt, at age 62 to record battle scenes and military figures. Working in both oil and charcoal, it was written about him that he "accepted his surroundings completely and went about his work as though quite accustomed to military life." One of his associates wrote that he "came to wonder if Sargent had any idea how dangerous an exploding shell might be, for he never showed the least sign of fear." (Mount 293)

His last years he devoted to Impressionist watercolors of European scenes and architecture. He found watercolor to be the most pleasureable outlet for his tremendous energy and compulsions to sketch what he saw around him. He was a man who lived for his work and aside from general socializing had had little private life beyond his family. He never married although "he had at times adored certain women, momentarialy finding in them a reflected image of what he sought" (Mount 323).

A major retrospective of Sargent's portrait painting was held at the Tate Gallery in London in Fall, 1998.