Cosmopolitan Circuitries: Relocating John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn

My dissertation situates John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn within a transnational artistic community in the late nineteenth century. Scholarly discussion of these prominent, contemporaneous European artists, best known for their portraiture, tends to consider their careers in terms of clearly delimited national boundaries: by interpreting each artist's oeuvre as a reflection of his national identity or as emblematic of his culture. In spite of their parallel geographies and the striking resonances among their artistic projects, there has yet to be a comprehensive study that critically examines their intersecting networks, both social and spatial. By situating these artists in direct dialogue and establishing their broader community of international portraitists, my project thus aims to disrupt notions of national exceptionalism and, instead, highlight nodes of international encounter, exchange, interdependence, and entanglement.