Existing comment:
Political Leaders
The links between money, class, and power shifted substantially during Sargent's lifetime. With the rise of American wealth and power, the European aristocracy became increasingly outmoded. For Sargent's sitters on both sides of the Atlantic, the first decades of the twentieth century brought enormous change. Millions of men and women lost their lives in World War I (1914 –18), and social shifts that had begun before the war intensified.
Along with this transformation, new leaders emerged who brought about progressive political reforms. Civil rights cases were successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Women's roles in government and society expanded dramatically. The right to vote was extended to most British and American women in 1918 and 1920, respectively. Many of Sargent's sitters actively campaigned for these social and political changes; others vehemently opposed them. Notably, a review of a 1916 exhibition of Sargent's portrait drawings cited his works as documents of a fraught period of history, observing: "They form a record . . . of some of the men and women who are struggling through a tempest unparalleled in the history of the world." |