This is an incredibly rich and exciting exhibition. The great artist is seen in these works as extravagantly creative, sensuous, responsive, with his extraordinary facility already reaching its zenith. There is great joy and exuberance in these paintings and drawings. The artist is brimming with life, and reveling in his own matchless talents. Taken together, these works present an astonishing contemporaneity — fresh and sparkling — though the most recent painting shown is nearly 120 years old.

The working portrait artist of today, viewing these works, comes away with some very strong impressions — and some lessons. The first, frankly, is awe at the exuberant, prolific, non-stop creativity of the artist whose works are shown here. Sargent obviously did not plod from commission to commission, but filled his days pouring out painted and drawn responses to the beauty around him. This response takes the form of innumerable smaller works, including variations on the themes which most intrigued him. Rosina Ferrara, the alluring, sultry beauty of Sargent's visit to Capri, is shown in perhaps as many as a dozen works.

The commissioned portraits of this period appear almost as interruptions to this joyous creativity. It is interesting that Sargent's first professional portrait assignment is included here, and it is the weakest picture in the collection. The 1877 portrait Fanny Watts is relatively sedate compared to the lively works surrounding it. Incredibly (for Sargent) the pose is stiff and the drawing of the hands awkward.

There are some unforgettable images here. The charming and richly-lifelike portrait of Lily Millet, wife of artist Frank Millet, demonstrates Sargent's full powers as a portraitist, yet the warm, delicate, lovely portrayal of this young woman captivates us with an intimacy that goes beyond conventional portraiture.

We see the many moods of Rosina Ferrara, the Capri girl of Sargent's 1878 trip to that island. The young artist was clearly captivated by this exotic young woman. We see her dancing on a Capri rooftop, dreaming in the branches of a gnarled olive tree, weaving a strand of onions in a sunny kitchen, and smiling at us in the sunlight, as her tousled hair partially hides her beautiful, dusky face.

The lesson for today's working professional portraitist to be found in this superb exhibition: Enrich your regular assignments with a continual output of creative pieces. It is the freedom and joy of these glorious extracurricular forays that kept Sargent's commissioned work fresh and innovative.

One final observation: the recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum entitled Manet/Velazquez, which pitted the great Spanish master against succeeding artists who had been influenced by him, featured a final gallery in which Sargent's work was hung immediately alongside the very finest examples by Velazquez. Where other comparisons (Velazquez versus Manet, for example) resulted in the latter artist looking foolish, the Sargent/Velazquez comparisons caused the viewer to ask, "Was Sargent in fact the greater artist?'

This superb new exhibition of Sargent's Women is so brilliant, so tantalizing, that we are urged again to put forward the question, "Is it possible that Sargent was, in fact, the greatest of all artists?"