The Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation, backed by a 1.5 million euro donation from US philanthropists, will annually give 25 students from each country a chance to spend a year studying the arts on the other side of the Atlantic.

Scholarships will be awarded based on talent and financial need.

Participating French institutions include the Conservatoire de Danse et de Musique de Paris, the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs, and the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Photographie.

New York’s Julliard musical college, New York University, the Fashion Institute of Technology, the School of Visual Arts, and the International Center for Photography will reciprocate.

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“Portraits in Praise of Women” will be the first large-scale exhibition that draws together a substantial selection of Sargent’s (1856-1925) portraits of women, a central body of his work that is often overlooked, according to Paul S. D’Ambrosio, chief curator at the Fenimore.

“He (Sargent) loves women and he loved painting women,” D’Ambrosio said. “In his portraits of women unlike his portraits of men he uses much more fluid brushwork, much more scintillating highlights, he just relishes the process of painting these women.”

The exhibition will show 25 of Sargent’s women from May 29 through to the end of the year. The exhibition will appear alongside the Fenimore’s permanent collection of American Art housed in a scenic country home in Cooperstown, a small town about 200 miles north of New York City.

On display will be preparatory drawings for the famous Madame X, a provocative portrait modeled on Parisian socialite Madame Pierre Gautreau. The painting caused a scandal when it was unveiled in Paris in 1884, which eventually compelled Sargent to leave the city for London, where he went on to set up his main studio.

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