The V&A

Sargent Season: The V&A

This one is short, because the V&A’s Sargent is not on the walls. It is in the study rooms, which means you have to ask for it, and I want to tell you right now that you should. Email the Prints and Drawings Study Room at the V&A, tell them what you want to see, and they will make it happen. They are genuinely accommodating. The only catch is that you need to plan ahead, because these appointments book up, and showing up and hoping for the best is not going to work here the way it did for me at Tate Britain.

What I requested: two watercolors, Fountain in the Generalife and Turkish Woman by a Stream (accession numbers P.2-1921 and P.31-1949), both held in the Prints and Drawings Study Room. And two works on paper, The Right Hon (accession number E.73-1937). Arthur Cohen and How They Met Themselves (accession number E.73-1937). Four objects, one afternoon, a table to yourself and white gloves and Sargent close enough to see the paper.

One more note. If you are already putting in this effort to truly search for Sargent, it might be worthwhile to infer about the small selection of images from the six hundred and eleven photographs that once belonged to Sargent (gifted by his sisters in 1925, Prints & Drawings Study Room, level E). The cataloguing for this collection is ongoing, but doesn’t that make getting a look at them even more exciting?! 

That is a different kind of looking than a gallery. There is no crowd, no wall text pulling your eye away, no one else deciding how long you get to stand there. Just you and the thing, which is, I think, the whole point.

Book early. This stop is worth it to see what others might not be able to. ers might not be able to.