Free Strapless by Deborah Davis

pamphlet entitled “England, the United States and the Southern Confederacy” to show his support for President Lincoln and the Union army, fondly imagined his strapping son growing up to be an officer in the U.S. Navy.
    But John had other plans. His interests were those of an artist, not a soldier. By the age of thirteen, he was spending hours in museums studying the works of the old masters. He took a notebook with him everywhere, and filled its pages with images from life done in pencil and watercolor. Mary’s friends in the art world were impressed by the boy’s talent and urged the Sargents to arrange for him to have professional training.
    As the family moved through Spain, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, Mary had two more children; Fitzwilliam Jr., who was born in 1867 and died two years later, and Violet, born in 1870. The death of one child seems to have brought the birth of another. The Sargents’ financial resources were increasingly strained, and so they moved to the affordable destination of Brittany, an area Violet later called “the land of rocks and cheeses” because of its stony terrain and omnipresent dairy products. The Sargents rented a small house in St.-Énogat, a suburb of the busy resort town of St.-Malo.
    While the move may have eased the family’s financial stress, they weren’t quite happy. Mary’s social ambition had never abated, and even the successful salon she organized in St.-Énogat did not satisfy it. Dr. Sargent, though pleased at having settled somewhere, was unhappy with the continued nomadism. He wanted his family to establish permanent roots.
    While neither Mary nor Fitzwilliam Sargent had achieved the adult life they had wanted, they were sensitive to their talented son’s needs. In 1874, acting on their friends’ advice, and knowing that the capital would offer the best instruction, they moved to Paris to find an art school for him. John had admired Carolus-Duran’s work, and after one meeting with the artist he made up his mind to study at his atelier. Carolus-Duran judged John’s portfolio accomplished and promising; he accepted him as a pupil on the spot and straightforwardly told him that although he had to unlearn some things, he showed great potential.
    Sargent was enthusiastic about his acceptance into the studio. Yet he must have felt apprehensive too. His mother had instilled in him a rigorous work ethic, and he knew he didn’t fit in with the high-spirited and self-consciously bohemian students, who would stage sponge fights in the studio and tease each other with pranks. Sargent was shy and taciturn. He dressed formally and was very serious about his work.
    His classmates could easily have ostracized him for being different, but instead they treated him with great respect. His painting astonished them. Sargent’s work, his classmate James Beckwith wrote in his diary, “makes me shake myself.” Another student described Sargent as “one of the most talented fellows I have ever come across; his drawings are like the old masters’.”
    Sargent was always the first to arrive at the atelier on Monday mornings, beating the other students to the best spot to position his easel. When Carolus-Duran’s class was finished and the model dismissed for the day, Sargent would talk other students into posing for him so he could keep painting. In the evenings, he would study drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts, then, after a hasty dinner, attend a night class with the artist Léon Bonnat.
    When he wasn’t in school, Sargent would join Beckwith and other new friends to visit museums and galleries, and to hear concerts. He still lived with his family, who had an apartment on the Right Bank, and he often brought fellow students home for family dinners and entertainments. Mary was delighted: she finally had the salon she had always wanted.
    Sargent gradually grew accustomed to the company of rowdy young artists. In a letter to his childhood friend Ben del Castillo, he