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François Flameng and Paul Helleu

John Singer Sargent American

Not on view

Sargent’s double portrait of these two French artists has an unusual composition. François Flameng (1856–1923) looks out at the spectator with a mildly ironic gaze, while Paul Helleu (1859–1927), behind him and in sharp profile, looks to the left. Frans Hals’s painting The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Civic Guard (1616, Frans Hals Museum), which Sargent copied when he visited Haarlem in 1880, may have inspired the composition. This sketch is inscribed to Flameng, though little is known about Sargent’s friendship with him. Sargent knew Helleu from their student days in Paris and painted him on numerous occasions.

François Flameng and Paul Helleu, John Singer Sargent (American, Florence 1856–1925 London), Oil on canvas, American

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