John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925), the most successful portrait painter of his era, lays bare his relationships with models Thomas McKeller, Wilhelm Kemp & patroness Mrs. Isabella Stewart Gardner while desperately seeking non-portraiture as his legacy.
McKeller became Sargent’s most "useful" life drawing model, standing in for men, women, the politically powerful and all forms of gods, goddesses and white people. The "colossal" painting of a totally uncovered Thomas McKeller, was only displayed "discretely & infrequently" to Sargent's closest friends, never publicly during Sargent’s lifetime.
Combining spoken text, life drawing, immersive imagery, and historical fact & fiction, HIDDEN confronts its past with future discovery. You’re invited to Sargent’s Pope Street Studio in Boston, 1922, to meet the artist, his patroness and two of his most “useful” models and join in the not so HIDDEN mystery of “Thomas McKeller”s disappearance for nearly one hundred years.
