I HAPPENED to be in the Boston area on July 4. It was the middle of a scorching week in the northeast United States but then it was also the 250th anniversary of the United States as a free country, the aftermath of the American Revolution. There were parades, fireworks and speeches, of course, befitting 250 years as a nation. There were also museum exhibits commemorating the felicitous occasion.
There was one at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts titled “Art of the Americas.” I chose to visit it, expecting George Washington, John Adams and the rest of the forefathers of the nation to be on center stage. They were there, of course, but represented in art pieces. The famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington was present together with two unfinished but already well-composed portraits of him and his wife, Martha Washington, found in Gilbert Stuart’s studio when he died.
The focus was on the art of the time in the US and there were exhibits of painting and sculpture of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th — but American artists. Two painters were focused on because of their proximity to the Independence era and its aftermath — John Singleton Copley and John Singer Sargent, both portrait painters.
Copley is considered the most celebrated American portrait artist of the 18th century. He was born in Boston to Irish immigrants working in Boston’s Long Wharf. Self-taught but under the influence of his stepfather who was an engraver, he became a realistic style painter known for his flesh tones and fabric images under his inventive lighting of his subjects. Being a leading portrait artist of the time, he was called upon to do portraits of the rich and famous. The revolutionaries like Samuel Adams and Paul Revere were painted by Copley as well as the members of the Boston establishment of the time, including their families and their pets, their homes and gardens, an interesting picture of the times and their personalities. The curated explanations of the latter rich families informed that most of them made their 18th century fortunes in the slave trade and the sugar industry in the Caribbean that was mostly worked on by slaves. This is the modern-day disclosure that most museums carry when explaining who the subjects of their portraits are.
John Singer Sargent was an American expatriate who learned to paint while his family led a nomadic life in Europe. Self-taught and eventually acquiring drawing lessons, he was soon in demand and well-known. He exhibited portraits at the Paris Salon, then the very famous exhibit area showing the different artistic trends of the time. Sargent became famous for his ability to use the brush to draw with paint rather than have a drawing on which to paint. His technique was able to capture skin tone and color dramatically in portraits, along with objects of the time in them. Sargent came later than Copley during a period known as the Belle Epoque, passing on to the Edwardian era. He was considered and considered himself an American painter though he was mostly living abroad in his lifetime. His American identity was at the forefront to his audience and to himself. The Boston Fine Arts Museum has the largest collection of his paintings, sketches, watercolors, murals, even sculptures. One of his paintings, a portrait that belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of New York, caused him a lifetime event. It was not on exhibit but is very famous because in its time it was controversial, to put it mildly. Entitled “Madame X,” it caused a scandal at the time because the subject was not unknown but a society lady considered a woman of affairs, according to contemporary opinion, who was shamelessly exhibiting her notoriety. It consisted in what was seen as a seductive pose in a clinging black dress with one shoulder strap off. Looking at it now, one could hardly find it so controversial. It is probably the generational or cultural gap. Yet it drove Sargent away from Paris to London because of the hue and cry over it, which lost him portrait clients and affected his career. In the end, he considered it his best work.
From the above, you would get an idea that this is the usual focused and conventional exhibit featuring the US and its times, its artists and their subjects, it being for its 250th anniversary as a nation.
But there was a surprise, the exhibit is actually more than that. It goes beyond the US to the Americas — Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala and even includes objects of the Acapulco trade. In this latter, there was a carved chest with a Manila provenance, some carved ivory statues of the Blessed Mother and saints attributed to Chinese artisans working in Manila and miniature reliquaries (religious objects) said to have originated from Manila and brought to the Americas by the Manila Galleon. The point made by the exhibit was that America is the North and South, and Central American continent, the New World that Columbus discovered.
From Peru and Bolivia, famous silver-producing countries, there were intricately molded silver bowls, plates, trays and figures. Mexico, under the influence of Oriental products coming to it from the Acapulco trade, had a biombo, or paneled wall divider, showing influences from Japanese or Chinese models of such objects, but with its own version of images and narrative made in Mexico. There were, of course, Chinese export trade objects like huge porcelain vases (a pair featured in one of the Sargent family portraits was on exhibit next to it). There were even paintings that were made in China for export to the West attempting to show Western images and events. Boston was a trade center that brought the world’s goods to its shores.
It was a revelation to see such inclusivity and universality in an exhibition depicting the times of American Independence and young nationhood with a look at its neighbors in the New World. In other words, the Americas are the whole continent and not just one country. And each one has its art and other expressions of cultural identity and influence. And they resonate with each other. That the Acapulco trade was included indicated how it was influential to the Americas from Mexico and beyond, also reaching the US.
I was able to see only two of the three floors of the “Art of the Americas” exhibit, but I venture to guess that the third floor showed something more contemporary. Someone who managed to see it should tell me if my guess is correct.
