As part of its centennial celebration, Gloucester’s Sargent House Museum will present “Sargent and Fashion,” a lecture by Dr. Erica Hirshler, of the Museum of Fine Arts, about the works of painter John Singer Sargent.  The artist is a descendant of the Sargent family of Gloucester and the great-great nephew of Judith Sargent, for whom the Sargent House was built.

Hirshler has written and lectured widely on American painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She will take the audience behind the scenes of the “Exhibition Lab” held at the Museum of Fine Arts in anticipation of the upcoming Tate Britain show, “Sargent and Fashion,” which will move to Boston in 2022. The Exhibition Lab includes an intriguing display of sumptuous clothing worn by the privileged people depicted in Sargent’s famous portraits.

Regarded as the most significant portraitist of his time, Sargent was known for controlling the presentation of his sitters through an exacting attention to details. He often chose what his subjects would wear, going so far as to require one sitter to pose in a heavy woolen overcoat through hot summer days in the studio, according to Hirshler.  Erica Hirshler is Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings and Acting Chair of Art of the Americas at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. She has published extensively on John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, Dennis Bunker, William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer, and women artists and collectors. She holds a BA from Wellesley College and a PhD from Boston University.

Tickets are $10 CAM/SHM members; $20 nonmembers. Sign up online at Eventbrite or call (978) 283-0455 x10