I have a special treat this month that I've been saving for almost a year. Last December, I was able to attend the astonishing exhibit Fashioned by Sargent at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The exhibit paired paintings by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) with actual clothing of the period for comparison, including many of the actual items worn in the paintings. This was heaven for a costume person like me! The clothing and artwork were each astonishing individually. But being able to compare clothing side by side with Sargent's paintings of it made it obvious how much Sargent tweaked the look of things and how cautious one should be using paintings as a source to reconstruct costumes. I spent several hours in the exhibit just staring intently at everything. And to add dance historian rapture to costume rapture and art rapture, two of the costume/painting pairs were of fancy dress costumes!
I took extensive photos, but I am not the world's best photographer, nor is my camera all that special. And the lighting in the exhibit was kept low to protect the paintings and textiles, with lots of little sparkly indirect lights that twinkled oddly off the protective cases in which the costumes were displayed. All of this adds up to photos which are not the greatest quality, but which I hope will communicate the beauty of the garments and the excitement of comparing them to the original paintings. There are much better lit photos of some of the paintings and clothing on the exhibit website, a couple of which I have borrowed for this post.
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The first costume/painting pair was not, as far as I can tell, originally intended as fancy dress. It just ended up that way. The subject of the painting was the twenty-one-year old Spanish dancer Carmen Dauset Moreno (1868-1910), a.k.a. La Carmencita. Amazingly, we have a short film clip of her dancing in 1894, thanks to Thomas Edison:
(As a costumer, I'm rather curious about what was supporting that skirt's shape -- some kind of small hoop or just stiffened fabric?)
Sargent's portrait of Carmencita is from 1890 and depicts her in a heavily decorated yellow skirt, bolero jacket, and wrap, maker now unknown. This was probably one of her stage outfits; it's similar to those worn in other portraits of her and in the video above. It is also possible that Sargent commissioned it for her in the style of her other outfits. Here are the MFA's official images of portrait and dress from the exhibit website:
Once again, you can see that the skirt must have had more support than the MFA gives it on the stand. A hoop seems like it would have been awkward when dancing; perhaps a short crinoline of stiffened fabric? Or a stiffened hem?
My own photos of the gown on display follow; you can see how much the lighting washes out the color:
Details of the decoration on the sadly limp skirt:
And of the bolero and wrap, including the all-important back and side views not visible in the painting!
So how did a (likely) stage costume end up as fancy dress? Well, according to the exhibit text, Sargent kept the outfit (lending credence to the possibility that he had commissioned it) and years later loaned it to his friend Sybil Sassoon to wear:
"I have had ever cupboard and box ransacked & the Carmencita dress is found...it is very dirty besides being very tawdry and clinquant [flashy]--but such as it is you can at any rate make up your mind as to whether you like it."
Apparently her wearing of the dress was a success, as Sargent later wrote:
"I am so delighted that the reincarnation of the Carmencita was such a triumph...every body says you were divine--I am so sorry I did not see you...Good oll' dress!"
It would have been nice if the exhibit had mentioned the dates of the letters, but we can narrow it down pretty closely. Sybil Sassoon, later the Sybil Cholmondeley, Countess of Rocksavage and later Marchioness of Cholmondeley, was a British socialite and patron of the arts, was born in 1894 and married in 1913. The dress was probably worn by her in the early 1910s, after she made her social debut but before her marriage changed her surname. That timing suggests a reason the skirt might look so different from in the painting: the wide skirt would have been distinctly out of style for normal clothing in the early 1910s. Sassoon might have either worn it without its original support (perhaps Sargent didn't have it?) or removed whatever stiffening gave the skirt its original bell shape to make it more fashionable or practical as evening wear and for dancing.
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The second costume, interestingly, was made specifically for that same Sybil Sassoon, who was now Sybil Cholmondeley and the twenty-eight-year-old Countess of Rocksavage when Sargent painted her in it in 1922. According to the exhibit labels, Sargent commissioned this dress himself based upon sixteenth-century portraits of Anne of Austria, queen of Spain. The maker was the famous French House of Worth; the materials are silk velvet, silk satin, and metal thread lace. Here's a photo of the original painting (source) next to a sample portrait of Anne of Austria, c1616, from the Prado reproduced for comparison in the exhibit:
You can see the similarities in the distinctive collar, pointed waist, trim placement, and hanging sleeves. Less easy to see is the Hapsburg double eagle brooch worn in both paintings; the exhibit implies that it is in fact the exact same brooch, owned by Sybil's brother Philip, who was a collector. The bare neck and double rope of pearls are more 1920s touches. Here are my photos of the painting on the wall in the exhibit and a detail in which the brooch is more visible:
Once again, apologies for the terrible lighting and my shortcomings as a photographer!
It's not clear from the exhibit whether Sybil ever wore the dress for an actual fancy dress event or whether it was used only for the portrait. Here are a few closeups of the dress on display:
The bright magenta of the trim really pops much more on the actual costume!
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There were many other astonishing gowns and paintings in the exhibit, including the famous "beetle wing dress" worn by actress Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, displayed next to Sargent's equally famous 1889 painting. It was interesting to see how much greener the dress is in person than the blue-green of the painting.
Sadly, Fashioned by Sargent is long closed, though it's still possible to buy the book and enjoy the website material. I am enormously grateful that I got to see it.
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