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syed

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  1. "A swagger portrait is one in which the sitter is shown, usually full-length, in ostentatious and self-conscious display. This type of portraiture was originally associated with the representation of aristocrats and military heroes in the Baroque period, but in the late nineteenth century its rhetoric was adopted by aspiring middle-class sitters at a time when the art of Van Dyck and regency portraitists, such as Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Thomas Lawrence, was especially highly valued.

    No portraitist was more successful in reviving the swagger portrait than John Singer Sargent, whose background and career embraced Europe, Britain and the United States. Sargent re-animated Old Master techniques to express the vivacity of the nouveaux-riches families who formed his clientele. One of Sargent's most important patrons was the connoisseur and art dealer Asher Wertheimer who commissioned a group of family portraits in the grand manner he revered. Following his death these were presented to the National Gallery by his descendants. In 1926 they transferred to the Tate and placed in a gallery dedicated to the work of Sargent funded by the dealer Sir Joseph Duveen."

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