On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Louis de Fourcaud
John Singer Sargent American
Not on view
Louis de Bousses de Fourcaud (1851–1914) was an influential figure in Parisian cultural life. He championed avant-garde artists and was a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1893. He studied music at the Conservatoire, campaigned for the revival of French instrumental music, and was a passionate advocate of Richard Wagner, whom he traveled to Bayreuth to meet in 1879.
It is possible that shared musical enthusiasm brought Fourcaud and Sargent together. Fourcaud began his career as an art critic at about the same time that Sargent first exhibited at the Salon, and from the beginning, his comments on Sargent’s early work were perceptive and laudatory. The portrait seems to reflect the young artist’s respect for the formidable figure.
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