Paris finally meets the artist they ignored: the most dazzling portrait artists of his time… John Singer Sargent and his first ever exhibition in Paris despite living there for almost ten years …
It feels both astonishing and poetic that Italian-born American artist John Singer Sargent, one of the most dazzling portrait artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is only now receiving his first-ever exhibition in France, at the Musée d’Orsay from 23 September 2025 to 11 January 2026. Walking through the galleries today, I felt a strange reversal of time: Sargent’s artworks in Paris, where the city trained him, shaped him, and, paradoxically, never fully embraced him. John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), born in Florence to American parents, arrived in Paris as an eighteen-year-old in 1874. He studied under Carolus-Duran, absorbed the French mastery of light and movement, and soon became known for his daring technique: a virtuoso play between precision and spontaneity. His portraits glowed with luminosity and astounded with an eye for detail in every fold of fabric and carpet, and every line and glint of gesture. Yet, despite exhibiting at the Salon and winning medals, Sargent’s relationship with France was fraught. The infamous scandal over his portrait of Madame X (Madame Gautreau), a painting too provocative for its time, effectively exiled him from the Paris art world. After that, and almost a decade in Paris, he made his home in London, where society could not get enough of his brilliance. He became the painter of personality. Still, there was Paris, the city that once launched him, and then forgot him. That’s why this 2025 exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay feels so extraordinary. It’s a homecoming for Sargent. The curators have brought together works from across his European years: the portraits, yes, but also his watercolours, travel sketches, and landscapes. The show reveals Sargent not as the society painter of England, but as the restless cosmopolitan traveller and a man fluent in light, culture, and identity. For me, living in Paris, this exhibition feels personal. I pass through the same boulevards where Sargent walked with his sketchbooks, seeing the same tones of morning light he once captured on canvas, and the same Luxembourg Garden where he painted his well-known scene. Yet somehow, for nearly 150 years, Paris itself has remained largely unaware of him. Perhaps that’s what makes this show so moving; it’s Paris finally acknowledging one of its own prodigal sons. Sargent’s brush may have belonged to America or England, but the soul of his art, I think, still speaks French. Additional reading and photographs of the exhibition: The art of John Singer Sargent Returns to Paris at the Musée d’Orsay
(Above) Madame X by John Singer Sargent
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