Edward Robinson

Artist:: John Singer Sargent (American, Florence 1856–1925 London)

Date:: 1903

Medium:: Oil on canvas

Dimensions:: 56 1/2 x 36 1/4 in. (143.5 x 92.1 cm)

Classification:: Paintings

Credit Line:: Gift of Mrs. Edward Robinson, 1931

Accession Number:: 31.60

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 774

Edward Robinson (1858–1931) probably met Sargent in the early 1890s, when he was the curator of classical antiquities at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the artist was working on murals for the Boston Public Library. Robinson was appointed director of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1902, the year before Sargent painted him. He would come to the Metropolitan Museum as assistant director in 1905 and serve as director from 1910 until 1931. In Sargent’s portrait, the library interior and the ancient bronze mirror on the desk (which Robinson presented to the Metropolitan in 1929 (29.141a–c) refer to Robinson’s career as an archaeologist and a scholar.

Signature: [at upper left]: John S. Sargent 1903

the sitter, Boston and New York, 1903–died 1931; his wife, Mrs. Edward Robinson, New York, 1931

Essays
America Comes of Age: 1876–1900
American Impressionism
Americans in Paris, 1860–1900
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)
Nineteenth–Century American Drawings

Timelines
The United States and Canada, 1900 A.D.–present

American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: John Singer Sargent
American Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 3, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1846 and 1864
Art of the Classical World in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome
A History of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with a Chapter on the Early Institutions of Art in New York
"John Singer Sargent in The Metropolitan Museum of Art": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 57, no. 4 (Spring, 2000)
Metropolitan Museum Studies in Art, Science, and Technology