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A woman with pale skin and dark brown hair is swathed in silky fabric as she reclines along a gray couch in this horizontal painting. Her head rests along the backrest of the sofa to our left, so her body extends to our right. Her torso is wrapped in a voluminous, ivory-white scarf or wrap. The scarf wraps tightly around her neck, and the bottom edge, near her knees, has a wide, indigo-blue pattern of ovals and vegetal forms. Her shimmering silver gray skirt is painted loosely with baby and sky blue, olive and sage green, and white strokes, and it drapes over the cushions and down the front of the couch. Her hands are clasped so her interwoven fingers rest at her navel. She looks down and off to our right. A table to our left is edged with gold. The wall behind her, above the couch, is painted with long streaks of eggshell white and pale turquoise. The gold frame of a dark painting hanging over the couch spans the width of the composition. Near the upper right corner of the canvas, the artist included a signature and as if he had signed the painting within this painting with loose, dark letters: “John S. Sargent 1911.”

John Singer Sargent

Nonchaloir (Repose), 1911

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 70

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 63.8 × 76.2 cm (25 1/8 × 30 in.)

framed: 82.87 × 96.2 × 6.99 cm (32 5/8 × 37 7/8 × 2 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Curt H. Reisinger

Accession Number

1948.16.1

Artists / Makers

John Singer Sargent (artist) American, 1856 - 1925

Image Use

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Overview

Sargent's inordinate technical facility, coupled with his ability to portray elegant sitters in sumptuous surroundings, made him extremely popular with wealthy patrons on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite his success as one of the most sought–after portraitists of the late Victorian era, Sargent eventually became exasperated by the whim and vanities of prominent sitters. By 1909 he had abandoned conventional portraiture in order to "experiment with more imaginary fields."

The woman in Repose is Sargent's niece, Rose–Marie Ormond. In keeping with his newfound preference for informal figure studies, Sargent did not create a traditional portrait; rather, he depicted Rose–Marie as a languid, anonymous figure absorbed in poetic reverie. The reclining woman, casually posed in an atmosphere of elegiac calm and consummate luxury, seems the epitome of nonchalance—the painting's original title. Sargent seems to have been documenting the end of an era, for the lingering aura of fin–de–siècle gentility and elegant indulgence conveyed in Repose would soon be shattered by massive political and social upheaval in the early 20th century.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II, pages 125-128, which is available as a free PDF (21MB).

Inscription

upper right: John S. Sargent 1911

Provenance

Purchased by Hugo Reisinger [1856-1914], New York;[1] his wife, Edmée Busch Reisinger [later Mrs. Charles E. Greenough, d. 1955], New York; her son, Curt H. Reisinger [d. 1964], New York; gift 1948 to NGA.

[1] [The first paragraph of this note was published in 1998 in the NGA systematic catalogue entry. The second paragraph adds further explanation and was published in 1999 in the catalogue of the Sargent exhibition shown in London, Washington, D.C., and Boston.] This information comes from a 21 April 1912 letter written by the American artist Gari Melchers to Frederick B. McGuire, Director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Melchers, who was in Europe for most of 1912, had been asked by the Corcoran to serve as the chairman of its 4th Biennial jury, and he wrote to McGuire: "Let me suggest a very beautiful little picture of Sargents which was bought by Mr. Hugo Reisinger in London last summer [1911], 'A seated girl with a shawl' perhaps you could secure that from our friend Reisinger." (Original correspondence is in The Corcoran Gallery and School of Art Archives, copy in NGA curatorial files; kindly provided by Marisa Keller, Archivist.) This information is at odds with a 6 December 1948 letter from Curt Reisinger's secretary to John Walker, then Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Art, that says "The Sargent, called 'Nonchaloire [sic]', was bought by the late Hugo Reisinger from C. L. Hinds (Mrs. Lewis Hinds), London, in December 1912." The Melchers correspondence indicates that Reisinger was the acknowledged owner of the painting before December 1912. The painting was first shown in the summer 1911 exhibition of the New English Art Club in London. Paintings in the exhibition were for sale, and it is possible that is where Reisinger purchased it; however, there are no records of sales or purchasers' names (letter of 5 August 1996 from Margaret Thomas, Archivist to the New English Art Club, in NGA curatorial files).

The Sargent catalogue raisonné archive contains a photocopy of a letter, from an untraced source, written by the artist to Mrs. Lewis Hind on 29 April 1911: "I promised to let you know when I had done certain things to the little picture of the woman on the sofa, in case you should wish to buy it for your German friend. She now has a head and hands and I [am] sending her to the New English [Art] Club where she [will] be on sale at the price of 300 pounds..." This would appear to explain the information cited above; apparently Mrs. Hinds did purchase the painting for Mr. Reisinger. (Elaine Kilmurray and Richard Ormond, eds. John Singer Sargent. Exh. cat. Tate Gallery, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Washington, D.C., 1999: 260.)

Associated Names

Reisinger, Curt Hugo
Reisinger, Edmée Busch
Reisinger, Hugo

Exhibition History

1911: Forty-Fifth Exhibition of Modern Pictures by the New English Art Club, Galleries of the Royal Society of British Artists, London, Summer 1911, no. 184.

1912: Fourth Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Contemporary Artists, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1912-1913, no. 31.

1925: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the Late John Singer Sargent, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1925, no. 107, as Nonchaloire (Mme. Michel).

1926: Memorial Exhibition of the Work of John Singer Sargent, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1926, no. 53, as Nonchaloire--Madame Michel, repro.

1926: Opening Exhibition of the Sargent Gallery, National Gallery, Millbank (now Tate Britain), London, 1926, unnumbered catalogue.

1940: Masterpieces of Art. European & American Paintings 1500-1900, New York World's Fair, 1940, no. 307.

1956: A Centennial Exhibition, Sargent's Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1956, no. 43, color repro., as "Nonchaloire" (Rose Marie Ormond).

1963: French, American, and Italian Review, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, 1963, no. 47, as Repose.

1964: The Private World of John Singer Sargent, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Cleveland Museum of Art; Worcester Art Museum; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, 1964-1965, no. 86, as Nonchaloire.

1971: Americans at Home and Abroad 1870-1920 [A Loan Exhibition for the Benefit of The American Association of Museums], Meredith Long and Company, Houston, 1971, no. 32, as Repose.

1998: John Singer Sargent, Tate Britain, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1998-1999, no. 146, as Nonchaloir (Repose).

2000: John Singer Sargent, Seattle Art Museum, 2000-2001, not in cat.

Bibliography

1925: Downes, William Howe. John S. Sargent: His Life and Work. Boston, 1925: 237.

1927: Charteris, Evan. John Sargent. New York: Scribner's, 1927, pp. 210, 291.

1956: McKibbin, David. Sargent's Boston. Exh. cat. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1956: 69, 114, frontispiece.

1959: Bouton, Margaret. American Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1959 (Booklet Number One in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 36, color repro.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 328, repro.

1964: Hoopes, Donelson F. The Private World of John Singer Sargent. Exh. cat. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1964: pl. 86.

1969: Mount, Charles Merrill. John Singer Sargent: A Biography. Rev. ed. (originally published 1955). New York, 1969: 475.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 96, repro.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 219, repro.

1980: Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: 16, 120, repro.

1981: Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: detail 126, 146, 147, repro.

1982: Ratcliff, Carter. John Singer Sargent. New York: Abbeville Press, 1982, p. 221, pl. 332.

1983: Nochlin, Linda. "Visions of Langour." House and Garden 155 (April 1983): 125-172, pl. 128.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 569, no. 868, color repro.

1988: Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 138, no. 46, color repro.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 333, repro.

1992: National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 248, repro.

1994: Fairbrother, Trevor J. John Singer Sargent. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994, p. 103.

1998: Kilmurray, Elaine, and Richard Ormond, eds. John Singer Sargent. Exh. cat. Tate Britain, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Princeton, 1998; Washington, 1999: no. 146, repro.

1998: Ormond, Richard, and Elaine Kilmurray. John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1908-1913. The Complete Paintings, Volume VIII. New Haven and London, 2014: no. 1739, repro.

1998: Torchia, Robert Wilson, with Deborah Chotner and Ellen G. Miles. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1998: 125-128, color repro.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 339, no. 274, color repro.

2012: Duits, Rembrandt. "'Abiti gravi, abiti stravaganti': Veronese's Creative Approach to Drapery." In Paolo Veronese: A Master and His Workshop in Renaissance Venice. Edited by Virginia Brilliant. Exh. cat. Sarasota, 2012. London, 2012: 63, 64, color fig. 26.

2019: Middleton, William. "Shawl in the Family: The Quest for a Legendary Textile Painted by John Singer Sargent Leads to the Private Quarters of One of the Most Famous Houses in England." Elle Decor (September 2019): 116-119, repro. 117.