John Singer Sargent's Charcoal Portraits

In 1907 John Singer Sargent announced that he was through painting portraits in oils. After all he was already rich beyond reason and saw no need to keep doing work that bored him. But he did continue to do portraits in charcoal, many of them subjects he chose himself because he admired their work. Last year the US National Portrait Gallery tried to host an exhibition of these portraits, but instead the epidemic broke out and the museum closed. Above, Lady Helen Vincent, 1905.

Gertrude Kingston, 1909

William Butler Yeats, 1908

Moorfield Storey, a noted civil rights attorney, 1917

Henry James, 1912

Ruth Draper as a Dalmatian Peasant, 1914

Lady Diana Manners, 1914

Ernest Schelling, 1910

Charlotte Nichols Greene and Her Son Stephen Greene, 1924

Dr. William Sturgin Bigelow, 1917