Notes on John Singer Sargent's Frames

No study in depth has been made of Sargent's frames so far. What follows is a revised version of a text written before the major Sargent exhibition shown at the Tate Gallery, Washington and Boston in 1998-9; pictures are indicated by their number in the accompanying exhibition catalogue by Elaine Kilmurray and Richard Ormond. These notes depend on a scrutiny of the frames as displayed but ideally the frames should be studied from the reverse. Further archival documentation is becoming available as Ormond and Kilmurray's catalogue raisonné is published; Ormond and Kilmurray propose a sustained study which will be published in later volumes of their catalogue.

You can read the article on the NPG's website here.

By Jacob Simon