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There are portraits that show teeth but the person isn't smiling broadly, or even smiling at all. Then there are others that show the person smiling, sometimes with a closed mouth, sometimes with an open mouth. I just looked through Sargent's collected works and found all sorts of variations, two of which I posted below.
I have never been a special fan of painting people with wide toothy grins, mostly because it looks static to me. Sargent relied on direct observation to paint, and his smiling people don't look static to me. Although he captured a moment in time, he probably waited for the moment to occur many times over, kind of like painting surf. The wide grin caught on a photo is great as a photo, but in my opinion it doesn't usually translate into paint that well.
That's not to say I think one should never paint a person smiling! I think there are all sorts of ways to do this. If the smile is a major identifying factor of a person (and I can think of several people for which that is true) then I could see the smiling expression being a good choice for a portrait. Sargent makes you feel this is true for Mrs. Darley Boit (below, image #1). She looks like a jolly, sociable matron.
I'm starting a portrait right now of someone who is inseparable from her smile, so I've decided to try and catch it in the moment of becoming, rather than fully blossomed. We shall see. . .!
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