As a child going to museums in Boston, Warren Adelson was drawn to the paintings of John Singer Sargent.
“It”™s what I always liked,” he says.
In those days, however, Sargent was dismissed as a superficial portraitist of the rich and famous.
“Professors would say, ”˜Oh, he”™s just a society portrait painter,”™ and I”™d think, Whew, what a painting.”
There are lots of “Whew” moments in the Adelson Galleries”™ “Sargent and Impressionism” (through Dec. 18), which considers the complex relationship between Sargent (1856-1925) and the art movement that galvanized Paris in the 1870s. For Adelson and his wife, Jan ”“ owners of the galleries, which are located in a tony townhouse near The Metropolitan Museum of Art ”“ American art from the late 19th century through the present day is an avocation as well as a vocation. (The couple, who live in Westchester County, just returned from a trip to see the new Art of the Americas wing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)
Yet even within a profession you adore, there are just some things that are closer to the heart than others. For Jan Adelson, it is the world of nonprofits, specifically the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, where she is chairperson of the board of trustees. For Warren Adelson, it is Sargent, whose creamy, light-infused watercolors of Venice and other continental locales ”“ as well as his sumptuous yet psychologically acute portraits of the Gilded Age ”“ have made him one of America”™s most distinctive and iconic painters.
Transcending Impressionism
Sargent”™s relationship to Impressionism, however, has been one of the less-explored, less-understood aspects of his art. Recently, however, Adelson came upon a group of about 10 letters written by Sargent in the 1880s to Claude Monet, perhaps the signature artist of the Impressionist movement.
“Unlike the social Sargent, these were quite revealing to us,” Adelson says. “They talk very specifically about painting.”
Sixteen years younger, Sargent saw Monet as a mentor. In turn, he introduced the older artist to London ”“ where Sargent earned his living as a much-in-demand portrait painter ”“ and to the American art market. This is one of the reasons American museums have so many Monets.
But, Adelson adds, “It would be facile to look at his work and say he was influenced by (Impressionism). ”¦ Sargent was too much his own man.”
He points to the artist”™s study for “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” (1885), a lovely summer idyll that depicts a pair of white-clad children lighting Chinese lanterns in a garden and that Sargent worked on for a half-hour a day at twilight over a two-year period.
“Sargent was similar to the Impressionists in that he painted out of doors and captured the effects of light on color,” Adelson says. “Unlike them, he did not use small brushstrokes of side-by-side contrasting colors for optical effect. He used broader brushstrokes.”
This gives Sargent”™s work a more sweeping, vigorous style.
Though he would transcend Impressionism, “it did teach him about color and light,” which Adelson says is evident in works like the pastel-colored reverie “Lady Agnew of Lochnaw” (1892-93).
Great works in the digital age
Adelson”™s affection for Sargent was cemented by a 1979 meeting with his great-grandnephew, Richard Ormond, who was attempting to archive all of his great-uncle”™s works. That led Adelson to undertake the catalogue raisonné, or complete catalog, of Sargent”™s works, which is being published by Yale University Press. Thirty years later, six volumes are complete and the seventh is close. There will be nine in all.
The Adelson Galleries are also responsible for the catalogue raisonn̩ of Mary Cassatt, the only American who actually did exhibit with the Impressionists. It will be available online only, sometime in the near future. The Adelsons both say that digital was the way to go with CassattӪs work.
“One of the things that is terrific about it is that it”™s a living, breathing archive,” Jan Adelson says, adding that she hopes it will ultimately be taken over by a university that can expand and update it as needed.
”˜Art in a new way”™
With the couple”™s three children mostly grown, Jan Adelson has moved into full-time duties at the galleries. But she”™s still making time for another love, the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, whose board she chairs.
“I love doing it,” she says. “I love (director) Michael Botwinick. He”™s one of the smartest professionals I know”¦.He”™s two steps ahead of everyone. But he doesn”™t leave anyone behind.”
Jan Adelson cites his leadership and that of Yonkers Mayor Philip A. Amicone with enabling the museum to retain its capital improvements, like the $4.9 million, 10,000- to 15,000-square-foot addition to the modern building that will free up gallery space in the Victorian-era Glenview Mansion.
Both Adelsons have also been working behind the scenes on fund-raising for The Metropolitan Museum”™s new American paintings galleries.
And though the Adelson Galleries are better-known for 19th- and 20th-century art, the couple has begun to champion contemporary artists such as the Andrew Wyeth-like Stephen Scott Young and folk painter Winfred Rembert, who uses leather to chronicle growing up poor, black and oppressed in the South.
“We had an opportunity to take on artists we admired,” Warren Adelson says, although he adds that “young people are much more interested in living artists.”
Says Jan Adelson: “I think it”™s wonderful that everyone is looking at art in a new way.”
