Arts: Sargent and Lowell

John Singer Sargent long ago quit the portrait-painting game, as such. When he makes an exception to his rule, nowadays, the outcome is more than likely to be something compelling—and so may be characterized the presentment of President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University, which at the moment is said to be nearing completion at the hands of Mr. Sargent.

This will be Sargent’s third portrait of distinguished persons connected with Harvard—the other two being of Charles W. Eliot, done in 1907, and the late Henry Lee Higginson, 1903. All three are in Cambridge, and, added to the murals and other works of Sargent in the Public Library and elsewhere in Boston, give this master a preeminent representation at the Hub.

The list of other famed Americans, living and dead, whose portraits Sargent has painted includes: President Theodore Roosevelt (for the White House), Henry G. Marquand, William M. Chase (Metropolitan Museum, New York), “Mrs. Austen” (Buffalo Fine Arts Academy), Mr. and Mrs. John W. Field (Pennsylvania Academy), James Whitcomb Riley (Art Association, Indianapolis, Ind.), Mrs. Charles Gifford Dyer (Art Institute, Chicago), the late Joseph Pulitzer and Mrs. Pulitzer and Charles H. Woodbury, marine painter.