A curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston called El Jaleo one of the sexiest pictures in the world. In all likelihood, that’s exactly the look that Sargent was going for.

Like the rest of turn-of-the-century Europe, John Singer Sargent was enamored with anything and everything Spanish. He and his bohemian buddies idealized the nomadic Spanish Gypsies as free-spirited, erotic, and daring. At the peak of his obsession, Sargent often told people he was half-Gypsy and traveled Spain for five months, immersing himself in the vibrant music, dance, and culture.

I know. I also think the half-Gypsy thing was a weird move.

Sargent made El Jaleo to capture the wild energy he observed during his travels. The dramatic shadows, whirling fabrics, and flamenco guitars played right into the fetishes of Parisian Salon-goers, and the work was massively popular. A wealthy Bostonian patron named Thomas Jefferson Coolidge (not a president) purchased the painting shortly after its first exhibition. He owned it in peace for a good six years before his good friend Isabella Stewart Gardner entered the story in ‘88. An art enthusiast with a savvy eye for interior design, Gardner was in the midst of transforming her home into a spectacular museum of art. She was quite the wild woman in her day, and El Jaleo - literally, “the ruckus” - emblemized her own love of the rowdy and exotic. Gardner was already tight with Sargent himself and had accrued a large collection of his sketches, but El Jaleo became her new fixation.

Unfortunately, Coolidge didn’t plan to hand it over anytime soon. Gardner had to lie in wait for twenty-six long years. Finally, the opportune moment arrived: Coolidge was going out of town. He agreed to let her borrow the painting until he returned, and Gardner seized her chance. She crafted an entire room around El Jaleo, complete with stone arches, Spanish ceramics, flickering candles, mirrored walls, and an enormous golden frame. When Coolidge returned from his travels and saw his painting transformed by the dramatic installation, he couldn’t bear to take it down. El Jaleo was his gift to the Gardner collection. Of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s many talents - designing interiors, collecting art, schmoozing artists, causing scandals - persuasion might just top the list.

Gardner and Coolidge were clearly fans right from the get-go. So was John Wayne, who recreated the scene in his 1960 film The Alamo. However, El Jaleo’s critical reception was more of a mixed bag; responses have ranged from “anatomically impossible” to “voluptuous” to comments verging on downright bizarre. One critic wrote extensively on the dancer’s castanets and Spanish hat, although anyone with eyes can verify that El Jaleo features neither. 

Now, the work hangs in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in the same candlelit shrine she built it back in the day. A curator described his visit as “like going into a cave or a nightclub.” Together, Sargent’s painting and Gardner’s installation evoke their shared philosophy: Life is best lived with a little jaleo.