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John SINGER SARGENT

Lettre autographe signée du peintre impressionniste américain à la chanteuse Eva Gauthier

Boston s.d. (1920), 12,9x16,6cm, 3 pages sur 1 feuillet remplié.

Autograph letter signed by American impressionist painter John Singer Sargent
 

Fine autograph letter signed by John Singer Sargent  to avant-garde singer Eva Gauthier after their first encounter, enthusiastically sharing his love of Javanese art. 
 A folded sheet on Copley-Plaza Boston stationery, 30 lines on 3 pages.
 The painter made two charcoal portraits of the singer which "will even become, in the minds of the public, a part of her identity" (Normand Cazelais, Eva Gauthier, la voix de l'audace) widely used by the artist for her concert programmes, and now in the New York Public Library and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. A keen music lover, Sargent was known to interrupt his sessions to rush to the piano and play a few bars when working on a portrait of a composer, singer, or musician.
 The recipient of the letter Eva Gauthier was considered the "High Priestess of Modern Song" by the Boston Herald. She began her career as an opera singer in Canada and London before moving to Java from 1910 and became the first Western woman to bring Javanese and Malay music into her repertoire. She was also one of the few female singers to perform Western classical music in China, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Tremendously eclectic, she introduced the music of Stravinsky and Gershwin as well as works from the contemporary avant-garde, notably members of the Groupe des Six whom she met in 1920. Sargent had also immersed himself in Java's music and visual culture which inspired him one of his most notable orientalist achievements: the series of Javanese dancers, discovered at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1889.
 "A renowned painter, John Singer Sargent, who shared her table at a banquet, takes great pleasure in hearing her recount her years in Java" (Normand Cazelais, Eva Gauthier, la voix de l'audace). Following one of these passionate conversations between Sargent and Gauthier, probably around 1919 or 1920, the painter writes her this letter: "it must be about two days since I sent you that javanese music that I had spoken to you about". Fascinated by the rhythmic music of the gamelan to which his models danced, he had just sent her a recording along with a letter of recommendation to a family in London.
 
Beautiful account of the painter and singer's common passion for Javanese culture which inspired Sargent one of his most renowned series of paintings (Javanese dancer studies, 1889) and whose music was interpreted for the first time in the West by Eva Gauthier.
 

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