John Singer Sargent: In the Studio of Edwin Austin Abbey

Edwin Austen Abbey's portion of the studio at Morgan Hall

"In November, 1891, John Singer Sargent joined Edwin Austin Abbey and his family at Morgan Hall, Fairford, and there for certain months in each year till 1895 he remained to share the studio and to pursue his Boston Library decorations. Two students were chosen to assist them, James Finn and Wilfrid de Glehn, the latter becoming one of Sargent's staunchest friends.

Work would begin at nine or nine-thirty every morning and continue till dark, the studio being divided into a Sargent territory and an Abbey territory. An Italian named Colarossi came as model for Sargent, and one Demarco, 'who had a very beautiful head,' posed for Abbey.

Later on a younger model became necessary for Sargent's purposes and an Italian named Inverno was chosen. This was the brother of Nicola d'Inverno, who subsequently in 1893 came to the studio as a model and remained in Sargent's service more than twenty years. He used to pose for the frieze of the prophets and other portions of the decorative work, and was constantly in attendance, assisting in the preparation of the 'relief' work for the Boston Library, and looking after the mechanical accessories of the artist's work, accompanying Sargent abroad and taking charge of brushes, canvases and paints. Nicola wrote his recollections of Sargent in the Boston 'Sunday Advertiser,' Feb. 7, 1926 and concluded: 'Every hour I spent in his service will be a precious memory for ever. The world calls him a great, I know him to be a good, man.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Back to London

"Interior of the Hagia Sophia"
by John Singer Sargent

"After Egypt and Greece, John Singer Sargent and his family went to Constantinople. Here, by bribing an official, he obtained leave to do a sketch of the interior of Santa Sophia, one of the most purely atmospheric canvases which he painted. There are probably a few better examples that exist of his power for rendering the structure and spacing of a building with the minimum of definition.

In August his sister Violet was married in Paris to Monsieur Ormond. It was not till the autumn of 1891 that Sargent was back in England after an absence, save for a brief visit in June, of two years. It was then that Mrs. Sargent and Miss Emily leased a house close to Sargent's own in Tite Sreet. In the years to follow a large part of his home life was spent with his sister Emily.

Sargent was beginning to be recognized as the first of living portrait painters. In London he had formed many friendships, and was greatly sought after. Being 'licked into London shape' had proved a less trying process than he had anticipated. He, Whistler and Henry James were recognized in the nineties as stars of the first magnitude, and though Sargent and James equally and consistently shunned publicity like the plague, 'renown' has a tendency to make things easy, to simplify the stranger's problems, and amplify his area of selection and choice. At the same time any one more completely unconscious of his prestige than Sargent can hardly be imagined. It coursed and eddied about his feet, but he never suffered it to throw him off his balance or to disturb the full and even measure of his working days."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Egypt and Greece

“Egyptians Raising Water from the Nile”
by John Singer Sargent

"In the autumn of 1890 John Singer Sargent and his sister, after a year's absence, returned to Europe, going direct to Marseilles, where they joined Mrs. Sargent and Miss Emily; the whole party proceeding together to Egypt and arriving at Alexandria on Christmas Eve. Thence they went to Cairo, where Sargent hired a studio and painted. After a month at Cairo, Sargent and his family embarked on a steamer and went up the Nile to Luxor and Philae. Sargent himself with an interpreter made an expedition to Fayoum.

His main purpose in Egypt was to familiarize himself with the legend and myth, the history and archaeology, the symbols and religion of the country, and thus furnish himself with the material for the first stage of his Boston decoration. He came away at the end of this visit equipped with all the knowledge his exacting mind could require. The character and significance of the Egyptian gods, their relation to their time, their influence in history, the legends to which they had given origin, and the symbolism by which they were surrounded, had now only to be sifted and sorted in his brain, that they might be adapted for pictorial embodiment. 

Just as Gustave Flaubert had visited Carthage and settled down to master the archaeology necessary for 'Salammbo,' so had Sargent pored over the monuments and lore of Egypt that he might correctly interpret the spirit and significance of the pagan deities. His accuracy has never been questioned.

In April the family crossed over to Athens, whence Sargent set out with an interpreter for Olympia and Delphi. Every morning he was in the saddle at 4 a.m., only ending the day's journey when night again fell. He rode through miles of country carpeted with wild flowers. Long before his return to Athens he had filled up every available corner of canvas and paper that he had taken for oil and watercolour."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.) 

John Singer Sargent: Murals and La Carmencita

"La Carmencita" by J.S. Sargent

"When Edwin Austin Abbey returned to England he sought for a place where he could work undisturbed. Wanderings through the West Country finally brought him to Fairford, where in Morgan Hall he saw the very house he wanted. This was in the autumn of 1890. He entered into a lease for twenty-one years and at once began the construction in the grounds of a studio 64 feet long by 40 feet by 25 feet. There in November, 1891, Sargent joined him, and in cordial association carried out much of the preliminary work for the Boston Library designs.

Sargent meanwhile had remained in New York through the summer of 1890, pushing on with studies for his decorative scheme, and filling up the intervals with painting a number of portraits and a study of Carmencita, a Spanish dancer recently arrived from Europe. The public of New York enthralled by her beauty and sensational dancing. 

She was reminiscent of the sources from which his picture of 'El Jaleo' had been drawn. In mood she was wayward, now sullen and subdued, then breaking into tempests of anger and impatience, ready to smash anything that was to hand or, again, sinking into an entirely childish readiness to be diverted or amused. She found posing intolerable. Movement was the essence of her existence. Sargent had to exercise his ingenuity. He used to paint his nose red to rivet her childish interest upon himself, and when the red nose failed he would fascinate her by eating his cigar. This performance was the dancer's delight.

Sargent was anxious that Mrs. Gardner should see this 'bewilderingly superb creature,' and in the end a party was given by her at the Tenth Street studio of William Chase. Sargent was seated on the floor. The studio was dimly lit. At the end of the room was just such a scene as he had represented in 'El Jaleo.' Carmencita, a light thrown on her from below, now writhing like a serpent, now with an arrogant elegance strutted the stage with a shadowy row of guitarists in the background strumming their heady Spanish music. Before she had danced many steps she threw a rose at her painter as he sat in the half-light on the floor. He picked it up, and put it in his buttonhole.

The picture painted by Sargent was  exhibited at the Society of American Artists at New York in 1890, at the Royal Academy in 1891, and at the Exhibition of American Art in 1919, and it now hangs in the Luxembourg. When the picture was exhibited in New York an admirer offered 600 pounds. Sargent said, 'I was unable to accept it as it had cost me more than that to paint.' 'Cost you more! how do you mean?' 'Why, in bracelets and things.' To such an extent had this capricious beauty to be coaxed before she would fulfill her promise to pose."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: The Boston Public Library Murals, Pt. 1

"Study for Frieze of the Prophets, Boston Public Library"
by John Singer Sargent

As John Singer Sargent prolifically painted portraits, figurative work and watercolors, he was also engaged with a stupendous decoration. Within a very few years of his arrival in England, when he was only thirty-four, he undertook his murals for the Boston Public Library and was occupied with it for the best part of thirty years. It was a task which taxed his imaginative and intellectual resources and evoked in him also a talent for the plastic arts and modelling in relief.

The Boston Public Library was designed by the famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White and was in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The trustees had resolved that it should be decorated internally in a manner worthy of the architecture. It was agreed to invite the cooperation of Sargent, Edwin Abbey, Puvis de Chavannes and Augustus St. Gaudens. Sargent was given the commission to decorate the special libraries floor at the head of the principal staircase: 84 feet long, 23 feet wide, and 26 feet high, lit from above with a vaulted ceiling.

Though Sargent's agreement with the trustees was come to in May, 1890, the contract was not signed till January 18, 1893, when they undertook to pay fifteen thousand dollars, and the painter to complete the work by December 30, 1897. In 1895 the scope of the scheme was very much extended. For another fifteen thousand dollars, Sargent agreed to decorate the side wall as well and another contract was signed.

His chosen subject for this work was "The development of religious thought from paganism through Judaism to Christianity.' For once he would not be dealing with the visible and tangible world, but rather a thing so abstract as a movement of thought. It was a daring scheme. He must have seen in a flash of intellectual vision the possibilities of the idea, and he started on the sketches immediately.

At the end of May, his friend Edwin Abbey wrote on the way to England: 

'I went into [John's] studio a day or two before I sailed and saw stacks of sketches of nude people, saints, I dare say, most of them, although from my cursory observations of them they seemed a bit earthy. You will surely get a great thing from him. He can do anything, and doesn't know himself what he can do. He is latent with all manner of possibilities and the Boston people need not be afraid that he will be eccentric or impressionistic, or anything that is not perfectly serious and non-experimental when it comes to work of this kind.'

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

"Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth"
by John Singer Sargent

"In 1889 John Singer Sargent exhibited at the Academy portraits of 'Sir George Henschel,' 'Mrs. George Gribble,' and 'Henry Irving'; at the New English Art Club, 'A Morning Walk,' and 'St. Martin's Summer,' and at the New Gallery the well-known picture of 'Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth.'

Ellen Terry's dress for Lady Macbeth was designed by Mrs. Comyns-Carr, who relates on the first night of the play Sargent shared her box and, on the appearance of Ellen Terry on the stage, exclaimed with that lingering intonation so familiar to to those who knew him, 'I say!' It was a sign in him, unpretentious in itself as a schoolboy's expression of delight, that he had been 'bowled over.'

Comyns-Carr described Terry's dress' genesis thusly: 'It was cut from fine Bohemian yarn of soft green silk and blue tinsel after costume designs by Viollet le Duc. Henry Irving did not think it brilliant enough, so it was sewn all over with red green beetle wings and a narrow border of Celtic design worked out in rubies and diamonds. To this was added a cloak of shot velvet in heather tones upon which griffins were embroidered in flame-coloured tinsel. The wimple and veil were held in place by a cordet of rubies and two long plaits twisted with gold hung to her knees.' This costume survives in the Ellen Terry Memorial Museum in Kent.

An art critic from 'The Times' reported that Sargent chose her pose to express 'the moment when Lady Macbeth, the deed accomplished, is putting on the crown . . . The face is pallid as death, and on it the artist has striven to express the meeting point and the clash of two supreme emotions - of ambition, and of the sense of crime accomplished and the moral law thrown down.'

It was Oscar Wilde who spoke of her appearance to pose for Sargent in Tite Street: 'The street that on a wet and dreary morning has vouchsafed the vision of Lady Macbeth in full regalia magnificently seated in a four-wheeler can never again be as other streets.' In her diary Ellen Terry gave her opinion of her portrait: 'The picture of me is nearly finished, and I think it magnificent. The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful . . . Sargent's picture is talked of everywhere and quarrelled about as much as my way of playing the part. The picture is the sensation of the year. Of course opinions differ about it, but there are dense crowds round it day after day.'

The picture was purchased by Henry Irving, who was himself sitting to Sargent at this time, and hung for many years in the alcove of the Beefsteak Room, where the actor liked to entertain."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and "John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits" by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray.)

John Singer Sargent: His Father's Death

"Self-Portrait," 1907 by J.S. Sargent

"In the early part of 1888 John Singer Sargent was back in England. His family had spent the winter in Florence, where his father had been struck down by a paralytic stroke. In the spring it was decided to bring him to England, and a house was leased for the summer at Calcot, Reading. Such time as he could spare from his work in London Sargent now spent with his family at Calcot. In the winter they moved to Bournemouth, to a house near Skerryvore, the former home of Robert Louis Stevenson. It was here in April, 1889, that FitzWilliam died.

Since his seizure at Florence Sargent's father had been an invalid, his contacts with the world broken, his memory affected, and his capacity for movement gravely impaired. Sargent watched over him with a 'lovely happiness of temper' and constant solicitude. The last months of the father's life were eased by the ministering care of the son. 

Yet Sargent did not, as a rule, suffer invalids gladly. By nature robust, he was so seldom ill himself that he was inclined to think others were apt to surrender too easily. When, in later years, he was subject himself to inroads of influenza he was singularly obstinate in working up to the last possible moment, then only to pursue unaided methods of salvation in the austere surroundings of his Tite Street bedroom. 

But those whose memories of him go back to 1889 recall vividly the rare quality of the tenderness with which he soothed the last months of his father's life. Before his father's death he had taken the vicarage at Fladbury, and there the succeeding summer was spent by the family."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Have Easel, Will Travel

"White Ox at Siena" by John Singer Sargent

"In the summer of 1886 John Singer Sargent again visited his family, who were living at Gossensass. These visits meant no pause in Sargent's output of work. He would arrive at the station loaded with canvases and sketchbooks, bristling with the equipment for plein air sketching. No infatuated fisherman, arriving beside a chalk stream on a summer evening, could be more on the tiptoe of expectation than Sargent on these occasions. To the end of his days he had the supreme gift of being able to look forward, with the certainty of discovering excitement in new scenes and places. 

Few artists can have rejoiced as much in the exercise of their calling; certainly none can have practiced it with more singleness of purpose. But it was away from his portraits, on the canals of Venice or the plains of Palestine, in the passes of the high Alps or among the dancers of Spain, or the fountains and cypresses of Italy and the gardens of Sicily or on any one of the countless journeys that he made with friends, that his spirit was most at ease and serene - anywhere, in fact, where he could 'make the best of an emergency' as he called painting a watercolour. And an emergency was seldom wanting. 

Mrs. de Glehn recalls how on a hot day in Italy, having missed a connection at a junction, the party had to wait a considerable time. The rest of them had no thought but how to keep cool, but Sargent at once unpacked his easel and in the great heat he brought off one of his most brilliant studies of white oxen outside the station. This is a typical instance of his zeal, which coined even the accidents of life into opportunity."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, Pt. 3

"Garden Study of the Vickers Children"
by John Singer Sargent

"The months flew past as John Singer Sargent painted 'Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose' and the evenings grew more chilly. He would dress the children in white sweaters which came down to their ankles, over which he pulled the dresses that appear in the picture. He himself would be muffled up like an Arctic explorer. At the same time the roses gradually faced and died, and artificial substitutes were then fixed to the withered bushes. In November, 1885, the unfinished picture was stored in the Millets' barn. When in 1886 the Barnard children returned to Broadway the sittings were resumed. 

One of the difficulties was the provision of the necessary flowers. When the Millets moved into Russell House a flower bed was cut in the garden and then the countryside had to be ransacked for roses, carnations, and lilies. Sargent, chancing on half an acre of roses in full bloom in a nursery garden said to the proprietor: 'I'll take them all. Dig them up and send them along this afternoon.' Sargent left no stone unturned, he suffered no obstacle to bar his passage where his art was concerned. When abroad in the same spirit he would cross a glacier, skirt the edge of a chasm or climb a precipice to gain the visual vantage. 

The unfinished picture had not been named, but one evening while Sargent was at his easel in the garden, a visitor asked what he intended to call it. Sargent happened to be humming the words of a song which they had been singing the previous evening, 'Have you seen my Flora pass this way.' One line of it was 'Carnation Lily, Lily Rose' and that line answered the question.

'Carnation Lily, Lily Rose' was first exhibited in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition of 1887, to a fiercely divided critical reception. A review of the exhibition in 'The Art Journal' noted that 'Mr. Sargent is certainly the most discussed artist of the year… as artists almost come to blows over this picture.' The 'Pall Mall Gazette' (a paper widely read by the middle classes) featured 'Carnation Lily, Lily Rose' in the category “Pictures You Would Least Like to Live With”, as voted by the readers. However, in a write-up of the show in the 'Magazine of Art,' the painting was praised as an 'extremely original and daring essay in decoration.'

Sargent was once again on everybody’s lips and his reputation restored. That same year, 'Carnation Lily, Lily Rose' was bought by the Royal Academy for the British public through the Chantrey Bequest, a special trust fund received by the RA in the will of Sir Francis Chantrey in 1875. Originally housed at the South Kensington Gallery (now the V&A), it was permanently placed in the newly created National Gallery for British Art, now called Tate Britain, where it is now one of the gallery’s most loved paintings."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and "The Story behind John Singer Sargent RA's 'Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose' by Harriet Baker.) 

John Singer Sargent: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, Pt. 2

"Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose" by John Singer Sargent

"The first step that John Singer Sargent took in preparing for "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" was to take as his model Mrs. Millet's small daughter, aged five, covering her dark hair with a fair golden wig and sketching her in the act of lighting a Chinese lantern at the moment when the sun had set and a flush still hung in the sky. While engaged on the sketch he saw the two Barnard children, then aged seven and eleven, who, with their parents, were living in a house nearby. They were of a more suitable age, and their hair was the exact colour Sargent wanted. He asked Mrs. Barnard to let the children pose.

Never for any picture did he do so many studies and sketches. He would hang about like a snapshot photographer to catch the children in attitudes helpful to his main purpose. 'Stop as you are,' he would suddenly cry as the children were at play, 'don't move! I must make a sketch of you,' and there and then he would fly off to return in a moment with easel, canvas and paintbox.

Sir Edmund Gosse wrote: 

'The progress of the picture when once it began to advance, was a matter of excited interest to the whole of our little artist colony. Everything used to be placed in readiness, the easel, the canvas, the flowers, the demure little girls in their white dresses, before we began our daily afternoon lawn tennis, in which Sargent took his share. But at the exact moment, which of course came a minute or two earlier each evening, the game was stopped, and the painter was accompanied to the scene of his labours. Instantly, he took up his place at a distance from the canvas, and at a certain notation of the light ran forward over the lawn with the action of a wagtail, planting at the same time rapid dabs of paint on the picture, and then retiring again, only with equal suddenness to repeat the wagtail action. All this occupied but two or three minutes, the light rapidly declining, and then while he left the young ladies to removed his machinery, Sargent would join us again, so long as the twilight permitted, in a last turn at lawn tennis.'

These brief sessions every evening went on from August till the beginning of November."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose, Pt. 1

"Lady and Child Asleep in a Punt under the Willows"
John Singer Sargent

"John Singer Sargent's acquaintance with Gloucestershire and the west of England began at Broadway. In 1885 (he had been at the Tite Street studio some six months) he went with the American artist Edwin Austin Abbey for a boating expedition on the Thames from Oxford to Windsor. At Pangbourne Sargent, who was a fine swimmer, dived from the weir and 'stuck a spike with his head,' Abbey wrote, 'cutting a big gash in the top. It has healed wonderfully well, but it was a nasty rap. It was here that he saw the effect of the Chinese lanterns hung among the trees and the beds of lilies... After his head was bound up he knocked it a second time and re=opened the wound.' 

Abbey insisted on Sargent coming to Broadway to recover, and so in September, 1885, Sargent took up his residence at the Lygon Arms, the seventeenth-century inn in that village. He carried with him a sketch of the effect he had noted on the river. It was the origin (so far, at any rate, as the arrangement of light) of the picture 'Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose.'

In those days Broadway had not added to its serpentine length a tail of modern dwellings; the traveller from the vale of Evesham to the Cotswolds was met, at his entrance into the village, by the sight of Russell House, with its tithe barn and old-world aspect.

In 1885 the Millets and Abbey were sharing Farnham House, which lies a few paces higher up the village street. Of this place Sir Edmund Gosse wrote: 'The Millets possessed on their domain a medieval ruin, a small ecclesiastical edifice, which was very roughly repaired so as to make a kind of refuge for us, and there Henry James and I would write, while Abbey and Millet painted on the floor below and Sargent and Parsons tilted their easels just outside.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.) 

weir: 1. A low dam built across a river to raise the level of water upstream or regulate its flow. 2. An enclosure of stakes set in a stream as a trap for fish.

John Singer Sargent: The Shift to London

"The Misses Vickers" by John Singer Sargent

"While the scandal of 1884 certainly contributed to John Singer Sargent's eventual decision to establish himself in England, his move was not a simple or immediate response to the drama which surrounded 'Madame X.' As early as 1882, a review in the 'Art Journal' had indicated that Sargent might choose to settle in England, and he had tested the waters there by exhibiting a range of pictures there at the Royal Academy, the Grosvenor Gallery and the Fine Art Society.

There were and would continue to be cross-currents in his artistic life between France, England and America, and it may be that for someone of his cosmopolitan background, London came to see the most natural and appropriate junction, as it had for Henry James."

In the summer of 1884, after leaving Paris, he painted the picture of the Misses Vickers which was exhibited at the Salon in 1885 and sent to the Royal Academy in 1886. The Vickers, who had been quick to appreciate the talent of the painter, became the first English patrons of his art in England.

Early in 1885 he moved to London and engaged a studio at 13 Tite Street (subsequently renumbered as 33 Tite Street) of which he took a twenty-one years' lease in 1900. It was the first step in his career as a painter in London. It had previously belonged to Whistler, who had decorated it with a scheme of yellow, so vehement that it gave a visitor the sensation of standing inside an egg.

Beyond Henry James and the American artists then painting in England Sargent knew few people. He was taking a venturesome step. In Paris he had left behind him that cosmopolitan world from which his sitters had been principally drawn. He was little known in England either personally or by reputation, and what was known about him placed him rather in the position of an accused suspect. Did he not come equipped with the French artistic outfit, and was not all French art suspect?

But he was twenty-eight years of age, his frame more solid than of yore, and of athletic build, his face now fuller but handsome and distinguished in feature and expression. A musician, a linguist, widely read in the literature of both England and France, and as deeply proficient in the history and theory of art as he was in its practice, he was well equipped for winning his way. His object was to record with the utmost skill attainable the thing as he saw it, without troubling about its ethical significance or, indeed, any significance other than its visual value. He was there to paint in his own way with only one task before him, to put at the service of art his own vigorous and accomplished technique.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and "John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits" by Richard Ormond and Elain Kilmurray.)

John Singer Sargent: Portrait of a Great Beauty, Pt. 2

"Madame X" (strap down, strap up) by J.S. Sargent

"John Singer Sargent's portrait of Madame Gautreau was accepted for the Salon of 1884. Varnishing day did nothing to reassure the painter. On the opening day he was in a state of extreme nervousness. It was the seventh successive year in which he had exhibited. Every Salon had seen the critics more favourable, the public more ready to applaud. But without suggesting that the critics and public of Paris are fickle, it is probably fair to say that popularity, fame and reputation are more subject to violent fluctuations there than in other European capitals. This, at any rate, was to be Sargent's experience.

The doors of the Salon were hardly open before the picture was damned. The public took upon themselves to inveigh against the flagrant insufficiency, judged by prevailing standards, of the sitter's clothing. The critics fell foul of the execution. The Salon was in an uproar. The onslaught was led by the lady's relatives. A demand was made that the picture should be withdrawn. 

It is not among the least of the curiosities of human nature, that while an individual will confess and even call attention to his own failings, he will deeply resent the same office being undertaken by someone else. So it was with the dress of Madame Gautreau. Here a distinguished artist was proclaiming to the public in paint a fact about herself which she had hitherto never made any attempt to conceal, one which had, indeed, formed one of her many social assets. 

Sargent's artist friend Ralph Curtis wrote of this event in a letter to his parents:

'I went home with him and remained there while he went to see the Boits. Madame Gautreau and mere came to his studio 'bathed in tears.' I stayed them off but the mother returned and caught him and made a fearful scene saying, 'My daughter is lost - all of Paris is mocking her... She will die of grief.' John replied it was against all laws to retire a picture. He had painted her exactly as she was dressed, that nothing could be said of the canvas worse than had been said in print of her appearance dans le monde, etc., etc. Defending his cause made him feel much better. Still we talked it all over till 1 o'clock here last night and I fear he has never had such a blow. He says he wants to get out of Paris for a time. He goes to England in 3 weeks.'

Anticipating Madame Gautreau's family destroying the picture, Sargent, before the exhibition was over, took it away himself and, after migrating to London, kept it safe in his own studio."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Portrait of a Great Beauty

"Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau)"
by John Singer Sargent

"In 1883 John Singer Sargent had begun a portrait which was to have a good deal of influence on his career. As far back as 1881 he had met Madame Gautreau in Paris society, where she moved rather conspicuously, shining as a star of considerable beauty, and drawing attention as one dressed in advance of her epoch. It was the period in which in London the professional beauty, with all the specialization which the term connoted, was recognized as having a definite role in the social hierarchy. Madame Gautreau occupied a corresponding position in Paris. 

Immediately after meeting her, Sargent wrote to his friend del Castillo to find out if he could do anything to induce Madame Gautreau to sit to him. 'I have,' he wrote, 'a great desire to paint her portrait and have reason to think she would allow it and is waiting for someone to propose this homage to her beauty. If you are 'bien avec elle' and will see her in Paris, you might tell her that I am a man of prodigious talent.'

The necessary preliminaries were arranged, and the disillusionment seems to have begun quickly, for after the first few sittings he wrote to Vernon Lee from Nice on February 10, 1883: 'In a few days I shall be back in Paris, tackling my other 'envoi,' the Portrait of a Great Beauty. Do you object to people who are 'fardees' to the extent of being a uniform lavender or blotting paper colour all over? If so, you would not care for my sitter, but she has the most beautiful lines, and if the lavender or chlorate of potash-lozenge colour be pretty in itself I should be more than pleased.' 

In another letter, and again to Vernon Lee, he wrote: 'Your letter has just reached me still in this country house (Les Chenes Parame) struggling with the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness of Madame Gautreau.'

Even when the picture was nearing completion he was assailed by misgivings. 'My portrait!' he wrote to Castillo, 'it is much changed and far more advanced than when you last saw it. One day I was dissatisfied with it and dashed a tone of light rose over the former gloomy background. I turned the picture upside down, retired to the other end of the studio and looked at it under my arm. Vast improvement. The elancee figure of the model shows to much greater advantage. The picture is framed and on a great easel, and Carolus has been to see it and said, 'Vous pouvez l'envoyer au Salon avec confiance.' Encouraging, but false. I have made up my mind to be refused.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Success

"The Daughters of Edward D. Boit" by J.S. Sargent

"At the age of twenty-six John Singer Sargent, an American, was being hailed in Paris as the author of the two outstanding pictures of the Salon. If it be true that art knows no nationality, the same might have been said of criticism, for here was a foreign artist, little more than of age, measuring himself beside the established favourites of Paris, beside Duran and Bonnat, Bougereau and Dagnan Bouveret, Bastien Lepage, Besnard, Boldini and the Impressionists, and being acclaimed as the most successful painter of the year.

He was soon receiving as many commissions as he could execute, charging for a full length eight thousand francs, for a half length five thousand, and for his subject pictures and landscapes anything from two to four thousand.

In 1883 Sargent exhibited at the Salon his picture of the Boit children, daughters of Sargent's friend, the American painter Edward Darley Boit, and his first wife, under the title of 'Portraits d'Enfants,' and was criticized for 'its four corners and a void' and the abbreviated execution. But the most captious acknowledged the beauty of the figures of the children, shown under a strong light upon a background of deep shadow relieved by a faint indication of light through a small window, rather reminiscent of Velasquez' 'Las Meninas.' What strikes the observer, in spite of the rather scattered composition, is the unity of the general impression, and this arrests his attention before his eye begins to take in the detail. 

The apparent ease of the grouping belies a complex and deliberate structure; the arrangement of the sitters, the rectangular patterning of floor, wall and carpet and the blocks of light and shade are part of an intricate geometric construction. There are no known surviving preliminary studies for the composition.

The oriental vases in the picture, made by the potter Hirabayashi or his workshop, of Arita, Japan, shared the family' migratory existence, making sixteen transatlantic crossings and suffering repeated damage.  They are still in the possession of a member of the family."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and "John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits" by Richard Ormond and Elain Kilmurray.)

John Singer Sargent: Holland in 1880

"Marie Buloz Pailleron
(Madame Edouard Pailleron)
by J.S. Sargent

"John Singer Sargent set out with Paul Helleu and Ralph Curtis for a tour in Holland, and to return before the opening of the Salon. It was his first opportunity of studying Frans Hals in his native country and in the fullness of his power. The impression was never forgotten. Indeed, Hals henceforward has to be reckoned as one of the formative constituents in his art.

Many years later, to Miss Heyneman who was seeking advice from him, he said: 'Begin with Franz Hals, copy and study Franz Hals, after that go to Madrid and copy Velasquez, leave Velasquez till you have got all you can out of Franz Hals.' Though preferences necessarily change in kind and degree and too much importance should not be attached to an artist's 'obiter dicta' [something said in passing], it is of more than passing interest to note that once when discussing genius in painting he said that the four painters who in his opinion possessed it in a superlative degree were Rembrandt, Titian, Tintoretto and Raphael, and upon Velasquez being suggested, added that no painter exceeded Velasquez in technical skill, but that he was less gifted in his power to interpret spiritual qualities.

While in Holland the party visited Scheveningen, and here Sargent did a sketch in oils of his friend Ralph Curtis, seated among the sand dunes. It is painted in a low key, soft in tone and delicate in colour, done obviously 'au premier coup,' and shows unmistakably that he was in these years inclining to the modern French school of painting. In the same year, 1880, he exhibited at the Salon a portrait of 'Mme. E. Pailleron,' the wife of the French author M. Edouard Pailleron, and 'Fumee d'Ambre Gris,' a study for which was shown at the Exhibition at the Royal Academy in January, 1826."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Spanish Treasures

"El Jaleo" by John Singer Sargent

"In the autumn of 1879 John Singer Sargent paid his second visit to Spain in the company of two French painters, MM. Daux and Bac. The party rode through the researched Spanish music and folk songs. It may be of interest to some to know that there were four pieces which he preferred, even sending for them from Boston in 1916, so that Isabella Stewart Gardner might have the benefit of them.

This expedition to Spain and Morocco resulted in several of his well-known works - among them 'Fumee d'Ambre Gris,' 'The Alhambra,' 'The Court of the Lions,' 'Spanish Beggar Girl,' 'Spanish Courtyard,' 'El Jaleo' and the 'Spanish Dance,' which, like so much of his early works, are now only to be seen in America.

'El Jaleo' [roughly translated as 'The Ruckus'] was subsequently bought at the 1882 Paris Salon. A critic for 'Le Figaro' called the painting 'one of the most original and strongest works of the present Salon.' The purchaser was Mr. T. Jefferson Coolidge, a relative of Isabella Stewart Gardner, who told her that the picture should one day be hers.

Anticipating the day when the picture would be hers, she built an alcove in her music-room at Fenway Court, framed in a Moorish arch, and along the floor arranged a row of electric lights which would reproduce, as far as possible, the conditions under which the picture had originally been painted. Mr. Coolidge, when he saw these preparations, accelerated his generous intentions and handed the picture over to be installed in this flattering environment. Sargent also presented her with an album of pencil drawings he had made as preparatory sketches for the work and twenty-two flamenco records, expressing strong preferences for certain singers and types of songs."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum website.)

John Singer Sargent: Capri and Rosina Ferrara

"Portrait of Rosina Ferrara"
by J.S. Sargent

"In the autumn of 1878 John Singer Sargent spent several weeks at Capri. Located just off the coast of Sorrento, in the southern part of the Gulf of Naples, Italy, Capri is a small, idyllic island, characterized by olive trees, vineyards and fishing harbors which nestle within small, rocky bays. 

One English artist, Mr. Frank Hyde, had a studio in the old monastery of Santa Teresa. He had never met Sargent and had never seen his work, but hearing that an American artist had arrived and was staying at one of the inns, he called and found him with no place to work, but perfectly content and revelling in the beauty of the island. Mr. Hyde invited him to come and work at the monastery. There he provided him with a famous model called Rosina, 'an Ana Capri girl, a magnificent type, about seventeen years of age, her complexion a rich nut-brown, with a mass of blue-black hair, very beautiful and of an Arab type.' 

Over the course of that summer, Sargent painted around a dozen works featuring the mesmerizing native of Capri, one of which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1926. In 'A Capriote' he painted Rosina in the middle of an olive grove with her arms wrapped around an olive tree, a pose illustrating her connection with the wild and natural beauty of the island. One of the best of his 'quick' portraits from early on in his career is 'Rosina Ferrara: Head of a Capri Girl.' It is painted in oils on cardboard. He signed and dedicated it to Hyde while he was still on Capri, wanting to thank him for introducing him to this girl. Rosina also appears in 'Capri Girl on a Rooftop,' dancing to the beat of a local friend's tambourine. And again she dances for Sargent in 'Portrait of Rosina Ferrara,' where we see her in local dress with her hair tumbling down and smiling for the onlooker.

During the remainder of his stay he resided at the Marina Hotel, entertaining the artists on the island and organizing a fete in which the tarantella was danced on the flat roof of his hotel, to an orchestra of tambourines and guitars. It was a marvellous sight with the figures of the dancers silhouetted against the violet darkness of the night under the broad illumination of the moon, the surrounding silence, the faint winds from the sea.

Capri was just the beginning of Sargent's pursuit of the exotic. Later he would seek out similar locations across Spain, Italy and France, and other muses."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and "A Capri Romance: John Singer Sargent and Rosina Ferarra' by Charlottle Stace in Daily Art Magazine.)

John Singer Sargent: Benefactor

"Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife" by J.S. Sargent

"Among John Singer Sargent's French colleagues were Lobre and the portrait painter Paul Helleu, his lifelong friend. When the two first met Sargent was twenty-two and Helleu eighteen. He astonished Helleu with his knowledge of French literature and his command of the French language. His conversation was indistinguishable from that of a cultured Frenchman. Helleu at the time was a struggling student and often unable to pay for a meal. Sargent seems to have suspected this to be the case. 

One day he climbed up to Helleu's small studio at a moment when Helleu was in the depths of despair about his work and prospects. The pastel which he had just finished had set the final seal to his discouragement and it was resting on the floor when Sargent, the successful young painter, opened the door. 'That is a nice thing,' Sargent said in a thoughtful way, pointing to the pastel, 'Charming, charming. The best thing you've ever done, mon petit Helleu.' Helleu protested, 'Oh, no, I was just thinking what a horror. I'd just torn it off the easel when you came in.' 'Because you've been looking at it too long, you've lost your eye. No one ever paints what they want to paint, but to me who can only see what you've done, not when you're aiming at, this is a charming thing I must have for my collection.'

Helleu was enchanted - he would be proud if Sargent would accept it. 'I shall accept it gladly, Helleu,' Sargent replied, 'but not as a gift. I sell my own pictures, and know what they cost me by the time they're out of hand. I should never enjoy this pastel if I hadn't paid you a fair and honest price for it.' Thereupon he drew out a note for one thousand francs. 

Helleu felt as if the heavens had opened. It was the turning point in his career. Sargent had set him on his feet. Helleu says he constantly helped his less fortunate competitors. He was equally generous with money, though it expressed itself in action shyly and by stealth, with encouragement and advice, or in improving the work of others with his own pencil or brush. His success stirred no envy. Fortune seemed to have chosen him for her own - his days were cloudless and his friends numerous and faithful."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: First Trip to America

"An Atlantic Storm" by J.S. Sargent

In 1876, John Singer Sargent sailed with Mrs. Sargent and Emily, his sister, for America. It was his first contact with the United States. He was an American by parentage, born and educated in the Old World, steeped in the culture of Europe, and now, at the age of twenty for the first time, he was introduced to his native country. 

Even in America, which was only for four months, the family continued to move, never omitting to see anything that had the least claim to interest. In that period they visited Philadelphia, Newport, Chicago, Saratoga, Niagara, Lake George, Quebec and Montreal, ending up with Washington and New York. It was the year of the Exhibition at Philadelphia, which coinciding with the the speeding up or large fortunes, did a great deal to start the fashion of collecting famous works of art. 

Sargent was entirely taken up with the examples of Japanese and Chinese art. It was just the moment when in Europe, and more especially in France, Oriental painting was influencing the modern school of artists.  Everywhere collectors were hunting for the works of Hokusai, Outamaro and Harunobu. Japanese artists were taken as models of reticence and economy in the statement of a fact, and as creating spatial atmosphere by means of a few lines. By the time Sargent was at work in Duran's studio the impulse from Japan had already passed into French painting, and its message had been extracted and absorbed. At the Philadelphia Exhibition he had before his eyes a further proof of what might be learnt from the East.

During his visit to America he seems to have done little painting. On the journey back across the Atlantic, during a storm in which their vessel was caught, he did a study of waves. This is one of the few occasions on which he took the sea as a subject for a picture, often though he painted water in fountains or lakes or canals. In his study of the Atlantic, the force and volume of the waves, the desolate iteration of crest and trough, and the dark anger of the storm are dramatically contrasted with the thin white track made on the waste of waters by the vessel and the frail platform from which the sketch is taken. It is a picture with distance, a thing comparatively rare in Sargent's landscapes."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Hard Working Student

"William Butler Yeats" by J.S. Sargent

"At eighteen years of age John Singer Sargent was still slight in build, a little shy and awkward in manner, reserved (as he remained throughout his life) in conversation, but charming, fresh, unsophisticated and even idealistic in his outlook on the world, engagingly modest and diffident, speaking perfect French, hardly aware yet of his gifts, and bound by a devotion to his sister Emily and his parents. All testimony agrees. And so he crosses the threshold of his career.

From the first he was a worker of astonishing capacity. He would breakfast every morning with his sister Emily at seven so as to arrive at the studio before eight, and on Mondays in order to secure a good place for the week he would start earlier. At five o'clock in the evening he would leave the studio and go to the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where he remained until seven. Dinner over, he would go to the studio of Bonnat and attend a class which lasted from eight to ten at night. On Sundays he worked at home, dining with his family and bringing fellow-students into the radius of that encouraging milieu. Among these were Caroll Beckwith, Frank Fowler, Russell, Edelfeldt the Finnish painter and Alden Weir. With all this he found time for music and for reading.

He was rarely to be seen except in the Latin Quarter. He was immersed in his work. Paul Helleu, then a fellow-students, remembers him as always dressed with distinctive care in a world which still affected the baggy corduroy trousers tight at the ankle, the slouch hats or tam o'shanters, and the coloured sashes associated with the Latin Quarter. He was a striking figure as he strode down the Rue Bonaparte to the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and already a little noted and recognized as one of the very few whose future could be looked on as definitely assured."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Lessons from Duran

"The Cancale Oyster Gatherers (on their way to fishing)"
by John Singer Sargent

"What did John Singer Sargent owe to the teaching of Duran? The question is best answered by remembering Duran's precepts and seeing how far they are reflected in Sargent's art. 

1. It has already been shown how Duran insisted on the study of Velasquez and the omission in art of all that was not essential to the realization of the central purpose of a painting. He had himself traveled far from the sharp contrast of values by which he had dramatized his picture 'L'Assassine.' He had got rid of his tendency to be spectacular. From Velasquez he had learnt to simplify.
   
   
2. His teaching was focused on the study of values and half-tones - above all, half-tones. Here lies, he would say, the secret of painting, in the half-tone of each plane, in economizing the accents and in the handling of the lights so that they should play their part in the picture only with a palpable and necessary significance. Other things were subordinate. 

If Sargent excels in these respects, it is sufficient to recall the fact that they formed the core of Duran's instruction. There is no need to put his influence higher. Few pupils in painting who have the talent to absorb their master's teaching fail in the long run to outgrow his influence and to progress beyond and outside it on lines of their own.

Sargent himself always recognized his debt to the teaching of Duran. At the height of his fame, when looking at a portrait by a younger painter, he observed to Mr. William James: 'That has value. I wonder who taught him to do that. I thought Carolus was the only man who taught that. He couldn't do it himself, but he could teach it.' Again, when Mr. James asked him how to avoid false accents he said: 'You must classify the values. If you begin with the middle tone and work up from it toward the darks - so that you deal last with your highest lights and darkest darks - you avoid false accents. That's what Carolus taught me.  And Franz Hals - it's hard to find anyone who knew more about oil paint than Franz Hals - and that was his procedure. Of course, a sketch is different. You don't mind false accents there. But once you have made them in something which you wish to carry far, in order to correct them you have to deal with both sides of them and get into a lot of trouble. So that's the best method for anything you wish to carry far in oil paint.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Atelier Duran

"Carolus-Duran" by John Singer Sargent

"Carolus Duran's atelier was managed by some American students, who made a fixed charge to cover expenses. Duran gave his services for nothing. That was the general practice. A painter would look to a return for his services in the prestige of his studio, and the missionary work done on his behalf by his students. In all cases the advancement of art was a sufficient pretext.

The pupils of the Atelier Duran worked in a studio on the Boulevard Montparnasse. A model would be drawn on Monday and painting would begin on Tuesday. Twice a week, generally on Tuesday and Friday, Duran himself would descend from Olympus to review the work of his pupils. The visit was a very formal affair. Nothing was omitted that could add prestige to the occasion.

The Master's entry was the signal for the pupils to rise in their places, then while they stood beside their easels he would approach one or other of them, and after a moment's inspection of their work and without turning around, hold out his hand for the brush or pencil with which the pupil stood ready. Having made his corrections Duran would pass on to a neighbouring easel. His observations were brief and his commendations exceedingly rare. 

One day a week the whole class would adjourn to Duran's own studio, where, with the awe in those days more easily inspired, they would watch the Master at work. No great cordiality seems to have existed between Duran and his pupils. They were there to learn and he was there to teach, and that was the beginning and end of it.

It was, then, to such a workshop and under such a master that Sargent at the age of eighteen was admitted as a pupil."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Carolus Duran

"Dame au Gant" by Carolus Duran

"Few painters have reached success by steeper paths than Carolus Duran, John Singer Sargent's most famous teacher. Duran was born at Lille on July 4, 1837, and in time was entered as a pupil of the painter Souchon, who had been a pupil of David. His promise was unmistakable, but his poverty was great. After bitter struggles he amassed just sufficient money to seek in 1858 the wider field of Paris. Here his talents were unrecognized, and he was unable to earn a livelihood. 

He attended not the Ecole des Beaux Arts but the Academie Suisse, where he met Fantin Latour, and where teaching meant, in the main, leaving pupils to work out their own salvation. He frequented the Louvre, and by copying well-known pictures for a few francs he was able to keep himself from actual want. His hope was fast failing. But he believed in himself, and he was gifted with a spirit not easily vanquished. 

At the blackest moment in 1860, he returned to Lille, where with his picture 'Visite au Convalescent' he won the Wicar prize. With the money he set out for Italy. There in the monastery of Subiaco, in the neighbourhood of Rome, he shut himself up to study the elements of his art. From thence he returned to Paris to experience a further period of trial and discouragement. He could find no patron and he was unable to obtain orders.

Then in 1866 he produced a picture, 'L'Assassine,' strongly  marked by the influence of Courbet and now in the museum at Lille. The purchase of the picture enable Carolus Duran to visit Spain where he fell under the influence of Velasquez. After six months he returned to Paris, dominated by his impressions of the Spanish master, whose works he had assiduously copied. Under this new inspiration, he painted 'La Dame au Gant,' a portrait of Madame Duran. With this picture his reputation was established. He moved from success to success, becoming the most popular portrait painter in Paris. Fortune, as if to atone, now showered on him prosperity and success. He became a dominant figure in Paris life. 

He was a favourite of the critics. He was acclaimed as a colourist. His portraits were applauded for their incisive force, for the skill with which he laid emphasis on revealing characteristics, for his power of detaching the sitter from superflouous accessories and decor and bringing him into a relation personal with the spectator.

It was at this point, in 1874, that John Singer Sargent entered his atelier."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Paris

"In the Luxembourg Gardens" by J.S. Sargent

"It cannot have been without misgiving that FitzWilliam Sargent decided that Paris instead of England was the place for John's art education; a decision which was proof of the liberality of his judgment and his belief in his son. Never was foresight better rewarded. In the interval the Sargents pursued their usual wanderings, and in February, 1874, the year which was to see Sargent established in Paris, they took apartments on the Grand Canal, Venice. Towards the end of this time John wrote his cousin, Mrs. Austin:

'I have been waiting all this time to send this letter with one from Mama... We are packing up in order to leave in the first week in May but the date of our departure is rendered rather uncertain by the provoking fact of my having sprained my ankle very severely two weeks ago on the stairs of the Academy... The Academy in Paris is probably better than the one here and we hear that the French artists undoubtedly the best now-a-days, are willing to take pupils in their studios. I do not think, however, that I am sufficiently advanced to enter a studio now, and I will probably have to study another year at the Academy. We go to Paris now for a short time to make enquiries about this, which will decide whether we go to Paris or not for next winter.  This unhappy Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence is the most unsatisfactory institution imaginable. However, this has been of no more consequence to me since my sprained ankle keeps me at home where I have a very handsome Neapolitan model to draw and paint, who plays on the Zampogna and tamburino and dances tarantellas for us when he is tired of sitting.'

In August the Sargents moved to Paris where John at once started work at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He was very soon faced with an examination, and that the prospect filled him with all the normal perturbations and misgivings:

'The exam is the Concours de Place for the life school of M. Yvon and it seems unreasonably long and difficult and terrible. It began on the 26th of September and two weeks are still to come. The epreuves [tests] de Perspective et d'Anatomie are over. I wish I might say as much for the Dessin d'Ornement which is in store for us tomorrow morning. But the supreme moment is one of twelve hours wherein we must make a finished drawing of the human form divine.'

In October he entered the studio of Carolus Duran, then the foremost portrait painter in Paris."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Decision to be an Artist

"On His Holidays, Norway" by J.S. Sargent

"The winter of 1868-69 was spent by the Sargents in Rome, and here the momentous decision was made as to John Singer Sargent's future. Every day that passed had emphasized his affinity with art. In Rome a German-American landscape painter, Carl Welsch, long since forgotten, took an interest in the boy and noted his aptitude for drawing. He invited him to come and work in his studio, and Sargent used to spend the mornings in copying the watercolors of Welsch. Those who frequented the society of the Sargents also recognized that the boy possessed a talent of no ordinary quality. The recognition became vocal. It was supported by his mother and reluctantly admitted by his father. 

Sargent was at this time tall for his thirteen years, slim of form, warm in colour, his hair dark, a look of alacrity and welcome in his eyes, a gait that was brisk and decided, and spirits that broke lightly into laughter. He was already an indomitable worker, with a disposition mellow with kindliness and goodwill. If he was sometimes imposed on, and if his good nature sometimes seemed to warrant aggression, this could never be carried far. He had a hot temper, a reserve of pugnacity, which was not so deep down that it could not be roused.

He was now specifically pledged to the profession of an artist, was busy in and out of season with his pencil - observing and noting before getting to work, crouching over his sketch, then lifting his head and holding up the drawing the better to criticize. The drawings were precocious, not in imagination, but as literal records of what was immediately before him. He drew whatever came to hand, never worrying to find special subjects, but just enjoying the sheer fun of translating on to paper the record of what he saw: the shadow of an oleander on a wall, the attitude of a fellow traveller in a railway carriage, the bronze figures around the tomb of Maximilian at Innsbruck.

Mrs. Sargent pressed on with the artistic education of her son. He was entered as a student from the life at the Academia delle Belle Arti, where he quickly asserted his superiority and gained the annual prize. During the springtime, when not engaged in his classes, he would set out with his mother to sketch in the neighborhood, in the Boboli Gardens, or in the Poderi of Fiesole, or among the valleys and slopes that curl and tumble from the mountains to the plain, or among the olives and cypresses at their feet."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)