SARGENT AT ARMS

Ten years in Paris showed John Singer Sargent how to live. A new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shares his lessons.

- Camille Okhio

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Every portrait by John Singer Sargent is a character study, conveyed in energetic and sensuous brushstrokes and incorporating the artist's masterful use of color, light, and shadow. But as an upcoming landmark exhibition of his early paintings, "Sargent in Paris" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (April 27-August 3), shows, his settings were as important as his sitters. Covering the 10 years he spent in the French capital starting when he was 18, the show also explores the artist's most experimental phase.

"This decade in Paris lays the groundwork for his professional career," says the show's curator, Stephanie Herdrich. "It's the foundation of his future success." The show will include Sargent's famous portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau (Madame X to most), along with several preparatory sketches of that painting with her infamous dress strap off the shoulder, rather than on.