Sargent's Javanese Dancers

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: 3 life-size paintings, on loan from private collections, were exhibited in conjunction with The Sculpture of Indonesia. Depicted were dancers of the Javanese troupe that John Singer Sargent had seen perform at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. The paintings had remained in Sargent's studio until the end of his life and had never before been exhibited together. D. Dodge Thompson, chief of exhibition programs, and Nicolai Cikovsky Jr., curator of American painting and deputy senior curator of paintings, proposed that Sargent may have intended these dancers to be included in one large work, although Sargent never proceeded with the project.

Organization: D. Dodge Thompson coordinated the exhibition at the National Gallery.

Related article: "John Singer Sargent's Javanese Dancers," by D. Dodge Thompson. Antiques 138 (July 1990): 124-133.