On February 14, 1928, Grand Central Art Galleries opened a posthumous Exhibition of Drawings by John Singer Sargent. Sargent had died in 1925, and the show drew on previously unseen drawings, watercolors, and preparatory studies discovered in his London studio. His sisters asked Walter Leighton Clark to review the material, and Clark selected hundreds of works for consideration; the final catalogue listed about seventy-five exhibited works. The selection ranged from teenage drawings and early watercolor experiments to studies for canonical paintings and public mural projects. By showing the workshop evidence behind works such as Madame X, Gassed, and the Boston mural cycles, the exhibition shifted attention from Sargent's polished society portraits toward his draftsmanship and working process.
The exhibition helped preserve and publicize Sargent's studio archive as evidence of his broader artistic method.
