The Eye; John Singer Sargent

Name: Sarah Cash

Occupation: Bechhoefer curator of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art

Residence: Arlington

The work: John Singer Sargent, “En Route pour la peche (Setting Out to Fish),” 1878, oil on canvas

What I want to tell you this piece: One thing that will surprise people when they come to the [Sargent and the Sea] exhibition is that this painting no longer has the title by which it has been known for so long, “The Oyster Gatherers of Cancale.” One of the things I did as curator was to restore its original title, as is our policy at the Corcoran. When we know the title under which a painting was first publicly exhibited, we try to use that title, as it’s usually the one the artist gave it.

Sargent usually gave very specific titles to his paintings, often depending on where they were exhibited. He was very savvy early in his career — he was 22 when he painted this — about establishing his reputation on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the 19th century, as today, Cancale was famous for the quality of its oysters. One of the things I discovered in my research is that though Sargent probably went to the village to prepare a major painting for the Paris Salon about oyster gathering, when he got there, it was the summer, when oysters are in their spawning season and not ready for harvesting.

What I surmise might have happened is that Sargent saw peasants walking along the beach with their baskets, and he recorded that in a little oil sketch (also included in Sargent and the Sea). Once he’d captured that on a small canvas, which I think he made on-site in the open air, he must have thought, “I love the way these peasants look. This is the subject I’ll use for my Salon painting.” That, I believe, is why he gave it the title “En Route pour la pche,” which means “Setting Out to Fish.” The people he painted are probably just picking up mussels, shrimp, clams, seaweed, maybe the odd oyster — the seafood they would cook and eat for dinner.

A smaller, more loosely painted version of the Corocran’s painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, derived from that same oil sketch, has the title “Fishing for Oysters at Cancale.” Sargent probably used that title because he knew he would exhibit that painting not in Paris, but in New York, where there was a mania in the 19th century for oysters.

But our painting was shown in Paris, where the audience would likely have known that oysters were not harvested at Cancale in the summer. Hence, “En Route pour la peche (Setting Out to Fish).”