John Singer Sargent: War Artist

"Street in Arras" by John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent came to share Henry James' view of WWI as 'a huge horror of blackness,' and became deeply sympathetic and involved. In March, 1918, his niece Rose Marie was tragically killed in Paris by a German shell. In June, 1918, at the age of 62, he and fellow artist and friend, Professor Tonks, were asked by the British government to travel to France and paint the war. 

On arrival he stayed with the Guards Division under General Feilding who wrote: 'We were a mess of about fourteen with him and Tonks....At dinner we were all together. He was a delightful companion, and we all loved him. He used to talk the whole time, and there was always some competition to sit next to him. He took an enormous interest in everything going on. He discussed music, painting and every imaginable subject.'

Professor Tonks wrote: 'Sargent entered completely into the spirit of his surroundings. I don't think he ever grasped much about the military campaign in actual being, which is curious as he had in his library and had read with deep interest many books on the Napoleon campaigns. I could never make him understand differences of rank - no, not the most obvious, so I gave up trying. Things which seemed the commonplaces of war surprised him as when he said to General Feilding one Sunday when the Band was playing, 'I suppose there is no fighting on Sundays.' Sometimes I used to wonder if he knew how dangerous a shell might be, as he never showed the least sign of fear. He was merely annoyed if they burst sufficiently near to shake him. Whenever he was at work a little crowd would collect, and they easily found him as he invariably worked under a large white umbrella...'

'From Ballymont we went to Arras where Colonel Hastings the Town Commandant found us quarters in about the best uninjured house in the place. Here we had two or three weeks together. He did a somewhat elaborate oil painting of the ruined Cathedral and a great many watercolours of surprising skill. I never could persuade him to work in the evening when the ruined town looked so enchanting. He worked systematically morning and afternoon. One day we head that the Guards Division were advancing so we motored towards them to find material for our subjects. We knew that a number of gassed men were being taken to a dressing station on the Doullens Road, so we went there in the evening. He immediately began making  sketches and a little later asked me if I would mind his making this essentially medical subject his, and I told him I did not in the least mind. He worked hard and made a number of pencil and pen sketches which formed the basis of the oil painting known as 'Gassed' now in the War Museum.'"

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: In the Rockies

"Yoho Falls, 1916" by John Singer Sargent (37" x 44.5")

"Early in 1916 John Singer Sargent again went to America. In the late summer he went on a sketching expedition to the Rocky Mountains and the west of America. He wrote to his relative on August 30, 1916: 

'Dear Cousin Mary, At the risk of importuning you with this persistent letter writing, here I go again. As I told you in my first or my last it was raining and snowing, my tent flooded, mushrooms sprouting in my boots, porcupines taking shelter in my clothes, canned food always fried in a black frying pan getting on my nerves, and a fine waterfall which was the attraction to the place pounding and thundering all night. I stood it for three weeks and yesterday came away with a repulsive picture. Now the weather has changed for the better and I am off again to try the simple life (ach pfui) in tents at the top of another valley, this time with a gridiron instead of a frying pan and a perforated India rubber mat to stand on. It takes time to learn how to be really happy...'

He had plans to move further north, as he wrote: '...It is delicious to be here among crags and glaciers and pine woods. But I shall make my way further north to the Canadian Rockies, where the scenery is grander still. I have two pleasant companions and we take daily rides on Indian ponies.' 

Isabella Stewart Gardner had promised to buy a picture of Yoho Falls in the Canadian Rockies should Sargent manage to paint one. Indeed he camped in a remote area under the falls and wrote to her: 'It is magnificent when the sun shines, which it did for the first two days. & I began a picture - that is ten days ago - and since then it has been raining and snowing steadily - provisions and temper getting low - but I shall stick it out till the sun reappears...' He stuck it out and the wonderful painting, 'Yoho Falls,' hangs in the Blue Room gallery of her museum."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum site: https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/10871)

John Singer Sargent: WWI Begins

"Dolce Far Niente" by John Singer Sargent

"A spirit of isolation belonged markedly to John Singer Sargent. He read no newspapers. He had the sketchiest knowledge of current movements outside art. When the War broke out he failed at first to realize its significance. He was very slow in relating himself to it.

August, 1914, found Sargent painting in the Dolomites with Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Stokes and Colonel Ernest Armstrong in a remote part of the mountains. When news reached them that War had been declared, Sargent's sole anxiety was for the fate of his sister Emily, who was in the north of France. As soon as he heard of her safety, he began unconcernedly painting again. 

Towards the end of August Colonel Armstrong was carried off as a prisoner of war by the Austrians to Trieuil, a few hours' journey away. He was soon in difficulties with the authorities, but Sargent in the mountains 'with the high pasturing kine' went on with his painting. The War might have been in another planet for all the impression it made on his mind. At the beginning of October, having been a prisoner for more than a month, Colonel Armstrong wrote an urgent appeal to Sargent to come and see him. Sargent at last descended. He interviewed the authorities in company with an Austrian acquaintance, and as a result procured the release of his brother artist.

No sooner had Colonel Armstrong been released than Sargent withdrew again to the mountains and resumed his painting, remaining in the Tyrol till November, when he returned to England. His reaction to the War was as yet nothing more definite than mild boredom. However that may be, it was a frame of mind of short duration."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Teaching at the Royal Academy, Pt. 3

Study of Madame Gautreau by J.S. Sargent

Composition - "When we were gathered in front of our display of sketches for composition awaiting some criticism, John Singer Sargent would walk along the whole collection, rapidly looking at each one, and without singling out any in particular for comment, he would merely say, 'Get in your mind the sculptor's view of things, arrange a composition, decoratively, easy, and accidental.' This would be said in a hesitating manner and then he would quietly retire. On one occasion, when the subject set for a composition was a portrait the criticism was 'not one of them seriously considered.' Many we had thought quite good, as an indication of what might be tried while a portrait was in progress. That would not do for Sargent. A sketch must be seriously planned, tried and tried again, turned about until it satisfies every requirement, and a perfect visualization attained. A sketch must not be merely a pattern of pleasant shapes, just pleasing to the eye, just merely a fancy. It must be a very possible thing, a definite arrangement - everything fitting in a plan and in true relationship frankly standing upon a horizontal plane coinciding in their place with a prearranged line. As a plan is to a building, so must the sketch be to the picture.

Observations - His general remarks were: 'Cultivate an ever continuous power of observation. Wherever you are be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents. Store up in the mind without ceasing a continuous stream of observations from which to make selections later. Above all things get abroad, see the sunlight, and everything that is to be seen, the power of selection will follow. Be continually making mental notes, make them again and again, test what you remember by sketches till you have got them fixed. Do not be backward at using every device and making every experiment that ingenuity can devise, in order to attain that sense of completeness which nature so beautifully provides, always bearing in mind the limitations of the materials in which you work.'"

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Teaching at the Royal Academy, Pt. 2

"Mrs. Edward Darley Boit"
by John Singer Sargent

Mr. Haley continues with his description of John Singer Sargent's instruction at the Royal Academy: "In connection with the painting, the same principles maintained, 'Painting was an interpretation of tone. Through the medium of colour drawn with the brush.' 'Use yourself to a large brush.' 'Do not starve your palette.' 'Accurately place your masses with the charcoal.' 'Then lay in the background' about half an inch over the border of the adjoining tones, true as possible, then lay in the mass of hair, recovering the drawing and fusing the tones with the background, and overlapping the flesh of the forehead, then for the face lay in hold by a middle flesh tone, light on the left side and dark on the shadow side, always recovering the drawing and most carefully fusing the flesh into the background, painting flesh into background and background into flesh, until the exact quality is obtained, both in colour and tone the whole resembling a wig maker's block. 

Then follows the most marked and characteristic accents of the feature in place and tone and drawing as accurate as possible, painting deliberately into wet ground, testing your work by repeatedly standing well back, viewing it as a whole, a very important thing. After this take up the subtler tones which express the retiring planes of the head, temples, chin, nose and cheeks with neck, then the still more subtle drawing of mouth and eyes, fusing tone into tone all the time, till finally with deliberate touch the highlights are laid in. This occupies the first sitting and should the painting not be satisfactory, the whole is ruthlessly fogged by brushing together, the object being not to allow any parts well done, to interfere with that principle of oneness, or unity of every part. The brushing together engendered an appetite to attack the problem afresh at every sitting, each attempt resulting in a more complete visualization in the mind. The process is repeated until the canvas is completed.

Sargent would press home the fact, that the subtleties of paint must be controlled by continually viewing the work from a distance 'Stand back - get well away - and you will realize the great danger there is of overstating a tone - keep the thing as a whole in your mind. Tones so subtle as not to be detected on close acquaintance can only be adjusted by this means.'"

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Teaching at the Royal Academy

"Kenneth Grahame" by J.S. Sargent

"The following extracts from Mr. Haley's account of John Singer Sargent's teaching at the Royal Academy Schools, 1897-1900, throw further light on his method:

'The Significance of his teaching was not always immediately apparent. It had the virtue of revealing itself with riper experience. His hesitation was probably due to a searching out for something to grasp in the mind of the student. That achieved, he would unfold a deep earnestness, subdued but intense. He was regarded by some students as an indifferent teacher, by others as a wonder. As a wonder I like to regard him.

He dealt always with the fundamentals. Many were fogged as to his aim. These fundamentals had to be constantly exercised and applied.

'When drawing from the model,' he said, 'never be without the plumb line in the left hand' - everyone has a bias, either to the right hand or the left of the vertical. The use of the plumb line rectifies this error and develops a keen appreciation of the vertical.

He then took up the charcoal, with arm extended it its full length, and head thrown well back; all the while intensely calculating, he slowly and deliberately mapped the proportions of the large masses of a head and shoulders, first the poise of the head upon the neck, its relation with the shoulders. Then rapidly indicate the mass of the hair, then spots locating the exact position of the features, at the same time noting their tone values and special character, finally adding any further accent or dark shadow which made up the head, the neck, the shoulders and head of the sternum.

After his departure I immediately plumbed those points before any movement took place of the model and found them very accurate. A formula of his for drawing was 'Get your spots in their right place and your lines precisely at their relative angles.'"

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Paint Studies

"Alberto Falchetti" (detail) by John Singer Sargent

"Miss Heyneman continues: 

'Paint a hundred studies,' John Singer Sargent would say, 'keep any number of clean canvases ready, of all shapes and sizes so that you are never held back by the sudden need of one. You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.' 

He thought it was excellent practice to paint flowers, for the precision necessary in the study of their forms and the pure brilliancy of their colour. It refreshed the tone of one's indoor portraits, he insisted, to paint landscape or figures out of doors, as well as to change one's medium now and then. He disliked pastel, it seemed to him too artificial, or else it was made to look like oil or watercolor, and in that case why not use oil or watercolor...

Upon one occasion, after painting for me, he saw one hard edge, and drew a brush across it, very lightly, saying at the same time 'This is a disgraceful thing to do, and means slovenly painting. Don't ever let me see you do it...' 

I have also seen the assertion that he painted a head always in one sitting. He painted a head always in one process, but that could be carried over several sittings. He never attempted to repaint one eye or to raise or lower it, for he held that the construction of a head prepared the place for the eye, and if it was wrongly placed, the under-construction was wrong, and he ruthlessly scraped and repainted the head from the beginning. That is one reason why his brushwork looks so fluent and easy, he took more trouble to keep the unworried look of a fresh sketch than many a painter puts upon his whole canvas."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Painting the Under-Structure

"Mrs. Hugh Hammersley" (detail)
by J.S. Sargent

"Miss Heyneman's usual model had failed, and she had persuaded her charwoman to sit instead. John Singer Sargent offered to paint her - which she describes beautifully here:

'This old charwoman's head was perhaps easier to indicate with its prominent forms, but the painting was more subtle. I recall my astonishment when he went into the background with a most brilliant pure blue where I had seen only unrelieved darkness. 'Don't you see it?' he asked, 'the way the light quivers across it?' I had not perceived it; just as, till each stroke emphasized his intention, I did not see how he managed to convey the thin hair stretched tightly back over the skull without actually painting it. He painted light or shadow, a four-cornered object with the corners worn smooth, as definite in form as it was indefinite in colour, and inexpressibly delicate in its transitions. He concentrated his whole attention upon the middle tone that carried the light into the shadow. He kept up a running commentary of explanation, as he went, appraising each stroke, often condemning it and saying: 'That is how not to do it! . . . Keep the planes free and simple,' he would suggest, drawing a full large brush down the whole contour of a cheek, obliterating apparently all the modeling underneath, but it was always further to simplify that he took these really dreadful risks, smiling at my ill-concealed perturbation and quite sympathizing with it.

The second painting taught me that the whole value of a portrait depends on its first painting, and that no tinkering can ever rectify an initial failure. Provided every stage is correct a painter of Mr. Sargent's calibre could paint for a week on one head and never retrace his steps but he never attempted to correct one. He held that it was as impossible for a painter to try to repaint a head where the under-structure was wrong, as for a sculptor to remodel the features of a head that has not been understood in the mass. That is why Mr. Sargent often repainted the head a dozen times. He told me that he had done no less than sixteen of Mrs. Hammersley.'"

To be continued

(From "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris.)

John Singer Sargent: Painting Process, Pt. 5

"George Francis Milne, 1st Baron Milne"
by John Singer Sargent

"I [Miss Heyneman] had been taught to paint a head in three separate stages, each one repeating - in charcoal, in thin colour-wash and in paint - the same things. By the new method [Sargent's] the head developed by one process. 

Till almost the end there had been no features nor accents, simply a solid shape growing out of and into a background with which it was one. When at last Sargent did put them each accent was studied with an intensity that kept his brush poised in mid-air till eye and hand had steadied to one purpose, and then...bling! the stroke resounded almost like a note of music. 

It annoyed him very much if the accents were carelessly indicated without accurate consideration of their comparative importance. They were, in a way, the nails upon which the whole structure depended for solidity."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Painting Process, Pt. 4

"Charles Martin Loeffler (detail)"
by John Singer Sargent

"The lightness and certainty of John Singer Sargent's touch was marvellous to behold. Never was there any painter who could indicate a mouth with more subtlety, with more mobility, or with keener differentiation. 

As he painted it, the mouth bloomed out of the face, an integral part of it, not, as in the great majority of portraits, painted on it, a separate thing. He showed how much could be expressed in painting the form of the brow, the cheekbones, and the moving muscles around the eyes and mouth, where the character betrayed itself most readily; and under his hands, a head would be an amazing likeness long before he had so much as indicated the features themselves. In fact, it seemed to me the mouth and nose just happened with the modelling of the cheeks, and one eye, living, luminous, had been placed in the socket so carefully prepared for it (like a poached egg dropped on a plate, he described the process). 

When a clock in the neighborhood struck, Mr. Sargent was suddenly reminded that he had a late appointment with a sitter. In his absorption he had quite forgotten it. He hated to leave the canvas. 'If only one had oneself under perfect control,' he once said to me, 'one could always paint a thing, finally in one sitting.' (Now and then he accomplished this.) 'Not that you are to attempt this,' he admonished me, 'if you work on a head for a week without indicating the features you will have learnt something about the modelling of the head.'

Every brush stroke while he painted had modelled the head of further simplified it. He was careful to insist that there were many roads to Rome, that beautiful painting would be the result of any method or no method, but he was convinced that by the method he advocated, and followed all his life, a freedom could be acquired, a technical mastery that left the mind at liberty to concentrate on a deeper of more subtle expression."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Painting Process, Pt. 3

"Alice Vanderbilt Shepard"
by John Singer Sargent

"At first John Singer Sargent worked only for the middle tones, to model in larges planes, as he would have done had the head been an apple. In short, he painted as a sculptor models, for the great masses first, but with this difference that the sculptor can roughly lump in his head and cut it down afterwards, while the painter, by the limitations of his material, is bound to work instantly for an absolute precision of mass, in the colour and outline he intends to preserve. 

Economy of effort in every way, he preached, the sharpest self-control the fewest strokes possible to express a fact, the least slapping about of purposeless paint. He believed, with Carolus Duran, that painting was a science which it was necessary to acquire in order to make of it an art. 'You must draw with your brush,' he said, 'as readily, as unconsciously almost as you draw with your pencil.'

He advised doing a head for a portrait slightly under life-size to counteract the tendency to paint larger than life. Even so, he laid in a head slightly larger than he intended to leave it, so that he could model the edges with and into the background.

The hills of paint vanished from the palette yet there was no heaviness on the canvas; although the shadow was painted as heavily as the light, it retained its transparency. 'If you see a thing transparent, paint it transparent. Don't get the effect by a thin stain showing the canvas through. That's a mere trick. The more delicate the transition the more you must study it for the exact tone.'"

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Painting Process, Pt. 2

"The Honourable Mrs. Charles Russell"
by J.S. Sargent

"At the beginning of a painting John Singer Sargent placed the head with a bit of charcoal, with no more than a few careful lines over which he passed a rag, so that it was on a perfectly clean greyish coloured canvas (which he preferred) faintly showing where the lines had been that he began to paint. 

At the start he used sparingly a little turpentine to rub in a general tone over the background and to outline the head (the real outline where the light and shadow meet, not the place where the head meets the background) - to indicate the mass of the hair and the tone of the dress. The features were not even suggested. This was a matter of a few moments. For the rest he used his colour without a medium of any kind, neither oil, turpentine or any admixture. 'The thicker you paint, the more your colour flows,' he explained. 

He had put in this general outline very rapidly, hardly more than smudges, but from the moment he that began really to paint, he worked with a kind of concentrated deliberation, a slow haste so to speak holding his brush poised in the air for an instant and then putting i just where and how he intended it to fall.

To watch the head develop from the start was like the sudden lifting of a blind in a dark room. Every stage was a revelation. For one thing he put his easel directly next to the sitter so that when he walked back from it he saw the canvas and the original in the same light, at the same distance, at the same angle of vision. He aimed at once for the true general tone of the background, of the hair and for the transition tone between the two. He showed me how the light flowed over the surface of the cheek into the background itself."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Painting Process, Pt. 1

Sargent's kidney-shaped palette which was found in his London
studio after his death. Brushes and paintbox from his Boston studio.

"When Mr. John Collier was writing his book on 'The Art of Portrait Painting' he asked John Singer Sargent for an account of his methods. Sargent replied: 'As to describing my procedure, I find the greatest difficulty in making it clear to pupils, even with the palette and brushes in hand and with the model before one, and to serve it up in the abstract seems to me hopeless.'

With the assistance, however, of two of his former pupils, Miss Heyneman and Mr. Henry Haley, it is possible to obtain some idea of his methods.

When he first undertook to criticize Miss Heyneman's work he insisted that she should draw from models and not from friends.

'If you paint your friends, they and you are chiefly concerned about the likeness. You can't discard a canvas when you please and begin anew - you can't go on indefinitely till you have solved a problem.' 

He disapproved (Miss Heyneman continues) of my palette and brushes. On the palette the paints had not been put out with any system. 'You do not want dabs of colour,' he said, 'you want plenty of paint to paint with.' Then the brushes came in for derision. 'No wonder your painting is like feathers if you use these.' Having scraped the palette clean he put out enough paint so it seemed for a dozen pictures. 'Painting is quite hard enough,' he said, 'without adding to your difficulties by keeping your tools in bad condition. You want good thick brushes that will hold the paint and that will resist in a sense the stroke on the canvas.'

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Painting Prices

John Singer Sargent working en plein air

"Though John Singer Sargent left a considerable fortune, there is little doubt that he could have doubled or trebled it. Money was a part of the machinery of life in which he took very little interest. His charges for portraits varied considerably. 

• For the 'Vickers' group (1884), he received 400 pounds; the 'Ladies Acheson' group (1901), 2,100 pounds; for the 'Baltimore Doctors' (1906), 3,000 pounds; for the 'Marlborough' group (1906), 2,500 guineas. 
• For full-lengths he received 1,000 guineas. 
• For lesser pictures prices varying from 500 pounds to 800. 
• During the War for two pictures, one of 'President Wilson,' the other of 'Mrs. Duxbury,' painted for the British Red Cross, he received 10,000 pounds each and to that extent enriched the funds of the society. 
• For oil landscapes he asked prices varying from 100 to 500 pounds. 
• For watercolours seldom more than 50 pounds. For eighty-three watercolours sold to an American museum in 1909 he received 4,000 pounds. 
• For charcoal portraits he charged at first 21 guineas, which price was gradually increased till in 1923 he began charging 100 guineas.

With regard to his drawings he wrote to Lady Lewis: 'I never know what to ask for a mere snapshot especially, if it does not happen to be a miraculously lucky one. It was with the utmost reluctance that he could be induced for the purpose of sale, to pull out any one of the watercolours which used to lie in their frames, jammed one against the other in a large rack on the floor of his studio. If in response to insistence he acquiesced, he would produce one or two, always with a good deal of gutteral protest, pointing out what he considered their drawbacks, and qualifying them with some derogatory title: 'Vegetables,' 'Dried Seaweed,' 'Troglodytes of the Cordilleras,' 'Blokes,' 'Idiots of the Mountains' and 'Intertwingles."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: A Change of Direction

"The Earl of Wemyss and March"
by John Singer Sargent

"John Singer Sargent's portrait of Lord Wemyess, 1909, may be regarded as the close of Sargent's official career as a portrait painter. After that he painted only when importunity made it churlish to refuse, or his own decided inclination prompted him to accede. The picture, subscribed for by friends, was painted for Wemyss' ninetieth birthday. Sargent considered it one of the best portraits he had painted, a view which was fully shared by the sitter. Nothing is more remarkable in this picture than the way in which the dreariness of modern dress has been disposed of, and a frock coat and tall hat made to serve the end of art.

The hat, held in the left hand, reflects a subdued accent of light. The lines of the coat barely to be distinguished from the background, lose all rigidity in the obscurity, emphasize the composition and indicate the upright carriage and dignity of the figure. The hands, which supply a half-tone in the lower section of the canvas, are a fine example of the painter's gift for modelling, and illustrate a topic to which he often referred - namely, the effect on the circulation and consequently on the tones of the hands when they are held downwards for more than a few moments.

Although he gave up portrait paint John Singer Sargent went on with his charcoal and pencil heads, and a census of these would produce a startling figure. It has been found impossible to arrive at even an approximate estimate of those he did in London and America. A distinguished diplomatist made a habit, when he found himself at dinner next to the lady he did not know, of saying: 'How do you like your Sargent drawing?' He declared that as a conversational gambit it was successful nine times out of ten. But it is not by these drawings that Sargent will live. They are likenesses and deliberate exercises in skill. It is only in comparatively few that his genius is apparent."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: "The Wyndham Sisters"

"The Wyndham Sisters" by J.S. Sargent

"John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits are not the product of any particular period, they lie scattered through his work. In 1900 he painted 'The Wyndham Sisters,' a tour de force in characterization, drawing and the handling of white. The portrait was not painted in Sargent's studio, but in the drawing-room of the Wyndham's London house, 44 Belgrave Square.

The three sisters, Mary, Madeline and Pamela, dressed in white, upon a white sofa in the lower half of the picture presented formidable difficulties: a risk of suggesting a section of geological strata. The artist has posed the elder sister seated on the back of the sofa, in profile, her head slightly turned to the spectators; her delicate intellectual beauty dominates the scene and carries the white into the upper section of the canvas. Further relief to the mass has been obtained by the magnolias, which effect the transition into the shadow of the room beyond. 

The beauty of the picture lies not only in the colour and drawing, but in the impression of serenity and calm. Sargent has here isolated these sisters from the world and encompassed them with their own associations. They are back once again in the surrounding that made their common bond; their mother's picture by Watts is seen on the wall beyond, the noise of life is hushed for the moment. There is a charming sentiment in the composition without a trace of sentimentality.

Letters from the family and close friends give insights into Sargent's artistic thinking. Pamela, the youngest, insightfully wrote:

'My sittings are over now - and he has not repainted the face. He worked on little corners of it and has much improved it I think. He has done the modelling of my nose, and taken a little of the colour out of my cheeks, this improves it - and has strengthened the lines of my hair. That is, where it was all fluffy and rather trivial looking before in the picture he has put in the sweep of hair turned back, This has strengthened it, and made it more like my head really. Then he has found out that the the straight line of my blue 'plastron' was disturbing to the scheme. And much as I regret my pretty blue front I quite see it was rather preclusive of other things in the picture as a whole. For instance both sisters seem to gain by its removal - one's eye is not checked & held by it. It was too distinct a feature in itself to compose well with other parts. He has not eliminated it wholly - but he has disguised it as if I had drawn the lace veil of my dress across it. My face also seems to gain significance by its removal...About Mary says he wishes to get a more 'dreamy' expression in her eyes. He says he can do this by touching the lids. As Mary's eyelids are a most characteristic feature of her face, I think he is right, but of course he will not do it till she sits to him.' 

'When the portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1900, it was hailed as a masterpiece  with 'The Art Journal' critic writing that he would 'hazard the opinion that as a vital and brilliant work in this kind it will be accounted in the future as one of the noteworthy products of the last quarter of a century.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris, and "John Singer Sargent: Portraits of the 1890s" by Richard Ormund and Elaine Kilmurray.)

John Singer Sargent: Plein Air Abroad

"Vase Fountain, Pocantico" by J.S. Sargent

"What scenery did John Singer Sargent prefer? He concerned himself little with panorama and distance and preferred close ups. Within these limits and given bright sunshine his range was exceedingly wide. His letters contain some indications of his preferences. Writing to Ralph Curtis from the Palazzo Barbaro in 1913 he said: 'The de Glehns, my sister and I are off in a day or two to the Lake of Guarda, where we have discovered a nasty little pension on a little promontory, which is otherwise paradise - cypresses, olives, a villa, a tiny little port, deep clear water and no tourists.'

To Mrs. Adrian Stokes he wrote: 'Ronda is a most picturesque place with magnificent scenery. It is on the edge of a tremendous cliff that looks across a great hollow with fine angular rocky ranges of mountains that would just suit Stokes. The objection to it is that the small boys are perfect devils and throw stones at painters and worry them out of their wits.'

He had no liking for trim and ordered gardens. They had to be derelict or at any rate unkempt, and the more time had played undisturbed with the tresses of tree and shrub, the more was his eye satisfied. Of Aranjuez he wrote: 'The place is perfectly charming, grand gardens with cavernous avenues and fountains and statues, long neglected - good-natured, friendly people - lunch in the open air under arbours of roses."

To these tours through Europe in his chosen company he owed some of the happiest months of his life. He was away from portraits, which by 1909 had become wearisome to him. As early as 1906 he had written to Lady Lewis: 'I have now got a bomb-proof shelter into which I retire when I sniff the coming portrait or its trajectory.' Abroad he could go where his eye led him, and choose his subject. Life was plain sailing on a sea of summer. He would breakfast at 7:30 and then sally out to sketch, working till the light failed. His energy was inexhaustible. The hours of sunshine were treasured like gold. 

Sightseeing was reserved for rainy days. In the evenings he would play chess, or the piano where one was available - duets, with Mrs. de Glehn or Miss Eliza Wedgwood, from Brahms, Schumann or Albeniz. 'The only pleasure,' he wrote, 'of coming back to one's own house is the pleasure of unpacking the bibelots one has got elsewhere - good wholesome sentiment.'"

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: At His Sister's Home

"Miss Eliza Wedgwood and Miss Sargent
Sketching" by John Singer Sargent

"As the years went by, work during seven whole days of the week made it difficult and physically irksome for John Singer Sargent to leave London. He stayed, too, at Lympne, Houghton and Panshanger, but his real home was the house of his sister Emily. He talked to her every morning on the telephone, and when not dining out he dined with her in her room looking over the Thames.

This was hung with the red damask that he had bought for her in Venice and, like her other rooms, with the pictures he had painted for her. Most evenings they had guests. Henry James, Mrs. Curtis, Professor Tonks, Wilson Steer, de Glehns, Nelson Ward, the Harrisons, Barnards, Alfred Parsons, Joseph Farquharson, R.A., Erskine Childers, and a few Academicians formed the nucleus of their society.

Professor Tonks writes: 

'I was introduced to his mother and sister by Steer, and was invited to Mrs. Sargent's flat in Carlyle Mansions to dinner, very often now it seems to me, looking back, where I spent some of the happiest evenings of my life. Sargent was generally there, and I have a feeling that those who were not fortunate enough to meet him at those dinner missed the best of him. 

The evenings were very informal. We generally went in our ordinary clothes, and there was a sense of freedom which encouraged everyone to speak at his best. Sargent was on these occasions decidedly a good talker. As a public speaker he was a complete failure. At a dinner given to him by the Chelsea Arts Club he could do little else than hang on to the table, but at the table in Carlyle Mansions he made an admirable host, enjoyed talking himself and listening to others. He had a very accurate memory, disconcerting at times, as he had a way of correcting careless quotations. He was a most honest and fearless expresser of his views, perhaps a little irritable on contradiction, more so as time went on.'"

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Sculpting

"The Crucifix" by John Singer Sargent
A maquette 1/3 size for the Boston Public Library murals

"While engaged at Fairford on his Boston decorations John Singer Sargent had made several attempts to model in clay. Modelling thenceforward was for him a recognized means to attaining his effects in the Boston Public Library decorations. Ranging from low relief to near sculpture in-the-round, the relief materials included painted and gilded plaster, papier-mâche, metals, wood, glass, and Lincrusta-Walton (a nineteenth-century wall covering material). 

In 1901 he exhibited at the Academy 'The Crucifix,' his most important piece of sculpture for the Boston murals. No one who looks at it can doubt Sargent's emotional interest in these decorations. Here on a Byzantine cross Sargent has placed the figure of the dying Christ. Adam and Eve are stationed closely to it in a crouching attitude on either side, each holding a chalice to receive the Blood of Christ. At the foot is a pelican feeding its young with the blood from its breast, an ancient symbol of the Resurrection. The Crucifix, the groundwork of which is gold, is so placed that the foot of the Cross forms part of the frieze of the angels below it. The remainder is included in the scheme of the lunette of the Trinity immediately above.

Whistler, as soon as he saw it in the Academy, wrote to Sargent to say how fine he thought it, and Whistler was not given to praising Sargent's art. Sargent himself considered that he had succeeded beyond his hopes. It was a work for which he had more liking than he generally allowed himself to entertain for his achievements. 

He gave to a few of his friends a small reproduction, and in a letter to Lady Lewis gave directions how it should be hung. 'I am sending you the little bronze crucifix which I feel I rather thrust upon you, but still I know you will like it if only that it will remind you of the better big one. It ought to be hung about the level of one's eye and if possible not in too strong a side light. A top light is best but now easy to find in a house unless you can find room for it on your staircase. But to dictate where a gift horse is to go would be looking the recipient in the mouth as Solomon says. I am only too delighted that it should be in your house.'"

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: The Wertheimer Portraits

"Ena and Betty, Daughters of Asher
Wertheimer" by J.S. Sargent

"On January 14, 1897, John Singer Sargent was elected an Academician by a large majority. In 1898 he began his series of Wertheimer portraits, and writing to Lady Lewis shortly afterwards he described himself as being in a state of 'chronic Wertheimerism.' Each picture as it left the studio served to whet afresh the appetite of the great art dealer. Indeed, Mr. Asher Wertheimer's only regret was that there were not more Wertheimers for Sargent to paint. There were no bounds to his admiration for the artist, or limits to his desire for the perpetuation of his family on canvas.

The series began appropriately enough with the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Asher Wertheimer which were exhibited in the Academy of 1898. It was the year of their silver wedding anniversary, and they were to be presented to the world in a form which would long outlive any anniversaries that they or many generations of their descendants were likely to celebrate. 

The portrait of Mrs. Asher Wertheimer bears an aspect of great dignity, of a serene and distinguished old age. Mr. Wertheimer's portrait makes us aware of success cynically enjoyed, of assessments as acute in the case of humanity as of works of art, of antipathies lived down by sheer astuteness, of triumphant pertinacity and of commercial secrecy. 

But no one picture of the Wertheimer series surpasses the portrait of the two sisters Miss Ena and Miss Betty. They are painted standing side by side. The elder and taller of the two, dressed in white satin, has her arm round the waist of her sister who, slighter and less tall, is in a gown of deep red velvet. The design is compact, balanced and rhythmic. In her right hand is an open fan of transparent material turned towards the spectator, and by this means Sargent has prolonged the lines and carried on the tones of the right arm. The open fan has given life and interest to this section of the canvas and, set off against the red dress, has helped to balance the distribution of dark and light in the picture. 

The iridescent ivory tints of the white dress, merging into the delicate blues and greys of the Chinese vase, the flesh tones, the background, and the beautifully painted hair of the two girls show a consummate mastery of colour. No stroke of the brush is without significance. Every accessory contributes to the harmonious unity of the group. There is no dull or unnecessary passage. This picture is one of the completest expressions of Sargent's art."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Dressing His Sitters

"Pailleron Children" by John Singer Sargent

"John Singer Sargent had very decided views as to what clothes suited particular sitters best. If for some reason they preferred their own choice it was always to the detriment of the picture. When Sir William Osler proposed to wear his Doctor's gown, Sargent said at once:

'No, I can't paint you in that. It won't do. I know all about that red. You know they gave me a degree down there and I've got one of those robes. Musingly he went on, 'I've left it on the roof in the rain. I've buried it in the garden. It's no use. The red is as red as ever. The stuff is too good. It won't fade. Now if you could get a Dublin degree!'

The picture was painted in Tite Street. In the background is the horseman by Greco, familiar to those who visited his studio. None of his work excels this picture for solemnity and dignity."

The Pailleron Children: "In her book of reminiscences, Marie-Louise, who became a prominent author in her own right, recalled the experience of posing for her portrait as a 'catastrophe' requiring eighty-three sittings carried out in a warlike atmosphere. Against her wishes, Sargent selected her costume, including a cream-white silk dress that allowed for soft shadows, and insisted that she exchange her silk stockings for cotton, as he preferred a matte surface. The artist and sitter also battled over the arrangement of her hair and the placement of the torque bracelet and brooch. In the end, Sargent channeled the girl's anger into his painting, creating a wonderfully tension-filled, disquieting portrayal of the Pailleron children dominated by the willful gaze of young Marie-Louise."

W. Graham Robertson: Another subject that Sargent sought out to paint was the young W. Graham Robertson, a gifted illustrator and theater designer who moved in London's elite art circles. When Robertson learned of Sargent's interest in painting him, he asked a mutual friend, the actress Ada Rehan (who would also be painted by Sargent), "Wants me. But good gracious why?" She responded, "He says you are so paintable: that the lines of your long overcoat—and the dog … he was tremendously enthusiastic.'

During lengthy sittings held in the summer, Robertson complained about having to pose in the heavy Chesterfield overcoat shown in the portrait. To that Sargent responded, 'But the coat is the picture.' The result was a great masterpiece of the Aesthetic movement. The thin young man with a distracted look is wrapped in the long black coat, bearing an elegant air, and holding a jade-topped cane, with his white poodle at his feet.

Jane de Glehn: The stylish figure of Jane de Glehn is featured in 'In a Garden, Corfu.' She wears an elegant white dress, which Sargent takes great care in rendering, along with the voluminous pale blue skirt that takes up much of the foreground of the painting and which the artist asked de Glehn to wear. A second friend, Eliza Wedgewood, whose head is seen at the lower right of the composition, later recalled, 'I used to read literally for hours, Trevelyan's 'Garibaldi' aloud to Jane de Glehn whilst John painted her in his robin's egg taffeta skirt …' Sargent had evidently brought the skirt from London with him on his travels in Europe for use in his figure paintings."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and 'Sargent's Theatrics: Dressing His Friends" by Elizabeth Mantin Kornhauser.)

John Singer Sargent: Too Many Portraits

Max Beerbohm's Caricature of Sargent and His Sitters

"After the portrait of Miss Priestly, exhibited at the Academy in 1896, a steady stream of portraits issued from the studio in Tite Street. Max Beerbohm's caricature here represents Sargent, with dilated eye and a countenance slightly bucolic, at his window like a farmer taking stock of his cattle, and surveying the row of applicants drawn up in the street below. Among the fashionable ladies waiting their turn may be seen boy messengers sent on in advance to keep places in the ranks, where Lady Faudel Phillips and the Duchess of Sutherland are conspicuous. 

One of his sitters, a famous personage, asked if she could invite some of her friends to be present at a sitting. Sargent reluctantly assented. At three o'clock the door bell rang, and during the next half-hour the friends continued to arrive, all strangers to Sargent, mos of the curiously dressed representatives of the aesthetic movement then at its height. By three-thirty the studio was thronged with an excited concourse; every moment the hubbub increased. By degrees he was pressed against his easel, and the area in which he used to step back to get a better view of his sitter was block. The sitting had to be abandoned."

 To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Fulham Studio

John Singer Sargent's Fulham Road Studio

"At the end of 1895, finding the calls on his time in London had grown so pressing, John Singer Sargent determined to take another studio in which to continue his Boston decorations. Accordingly, he gave up residing at Morgan Hall with the Abbeys and took a twenty-one years' lease of 12 and 14, The Avenue, Fulham Road. For the rest of his life when in London the great part of his time was spent in the large studio, which, with an adjoining room where he worked at the architectural part of his decorations, comprised the new premises. They lay removed from the thoroughfare with an unwelcoming approach through a backyard. Here he could withdraw from the world and admit visitor or not as he liked. 

An unanswered rap on the door was no proof that Sargent was not within. If he answered, it was invariably in his shirt-sleeves, generally with a cigarette in his mouth, and always with a robust welcome. Scores of pencil studies lay about and vast canvases were in position against the wall, and with regard to these he was always curious to hear the views of a layman, and ready to discuss his criticism and approval. The contents of his workshop next door, where he worked out problems of lighting and calculations of architectural proportion and geometrical relations, were much more recondite. Here the amateur could only display a totally unintelligent interest. His famous picture 'Gassed' was painted at Fulham Road, also the Generals of the War and the decorations of Boston. He also built a 1/3 scale model of the Boston Library commission to help him envisage the scheme as it developed, the whole structure assembled on wheels and moved about the studio by means of a system of chains and pulleys. 

Some years later, when sated with painting portraits, he wrote to Ralph Curtis: 

'No more 'paughtraits' whether refreshed or not. I abhor and abjure them and hope never to do another especially of the Upper Classes. I have weakly compromised and lately done a lot of mugs in coke and charcoal and am sick of that too, although occasionally the brief operation has been painless. I am winding up my worldly affairs in that line and now I shall be able to paint nothing but Jehovah in Fulham Road...'

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Musician

"Dame Ethel Mary Smyth" by J.S. Sargent*

"Joachim is credited with the remark that 'had Sargent taken to music instead of painting he would have been as great a musician as he was a painter.' Other musicians also thought very highly of his musical talents. Violinist, pianist and composer Charles Martin Loeffler penned:

'Dear Sir, In answer to your question about John Singer Sargent's 'musicalness' permit me to jot down in a loose way the various impressions I received of this in the course of many years of my enjoying the privilege of his delightful and generous friendship. I met Mr. Sargent some 35 years ago after a Symphony Concert in Boston where I had played Lalo's 'Symphonie Espagnole,' a delightful work of which Sargent was very fond. He arranged for our meeting a few days later when he played with me 'en petit Comite' the Symphonie Espagnole in which he revealed himself as the admirable musician which he innately was. He was quite amazing in accompanying The 3rd Movement ('Intermede') a quite splendid piece of music with rather complicated rhythms in 5/8 time, which he played with complete musical and rhythmical understanding, verse and spirit. He sailed through his part in Faure's perplexingly 'Swift' Sonata. Not by any means that he always played all the notes, but better than that, when cornered by a surprise difficulty, he revealed his genuine talent for music by playing all that which was and is most essential.'

Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist, Mr. Percy Grainger wrote: 

'John Singer Sargent was one of the most outstanding musicians I have ever met. To hear him play the piano was indeed a treat, for his pianism had the manliness and richness of his painting, though, naturally, it lacked that polished skillfulness that comes only with many hourly daily practice sessions spread over many years. He delighted especially in playing his favourite, Faure... Music seemed to be less a recreation to him than a sacred duty, the duty of aiding especial musical talent wherever he found it. It was primarily the creative musicians (composers) to whom he was most powerfully drawn, and whom he aided most extensively. He had only to announce his approval of any musician for hostesses to spring up ready to engage these proteges, hoping that their performance at their 'At Homes' would guarantee them Sargent's coveted presence - which it usually did."

To be continued

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

*"Ethel Smyth (1858–1944), the daughter of a British major-general, took up music in the face of parental opposition, studied in Leipzig, and established herself as a composer of oratorios and concertos. Her best-known work is the opera The Wreckers (1906) with a libretto by her close friend Harry Brewster. Smyth was also a committed champion of women’s rights and played a prominent role in the suffrage movement.
In her autobiography, Smyth describes posing for this drawing while seated at the piano and singing. She recalled that Sargent implored her "to sing the most desperately exciting songs I knew." The resulting portrait, created in an hour and a half, suggests the concentration of her performance." (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/21426 )

John Singer Sargent: Associate of the Royal Academy

"Israelites Oppressed" by John Singer Sargent

"In 1894 John Singer Sargent, who that year was represented in the Academy by a portrait of Miss Chanler, and a lunette and portion of the ceiling for the Public Library of Boston, and in the New English Art Club by four sketches, was elected an A.R.A. (Associate of the Royal Academy). His own art was too clearly distance from the Academic painting of the day for him not to experience some nervousness at finding himself in such company. In thanking Ralph Curtis for his congratulations on the honour thus conferred, he wrote:

'My Dear Ralph, Thanks for your flourish of trumpets and waving of caps - If one lives in London, as I seem to be doing vaguely, I suppose it really counts for something to be an A.R.A. It remains to be proved; but I shall watch for the symptoms with interest. I have had no end of letters of congratulation from Academicians which would point to the fact of my having more of an affinity with old fogies than I expected. Today I have called on about 20 of them, such is the tradition and it is a curious revelation to find the man whose name and work one has hated and railed at for years, is a man of the world and altogether delightful...'

The reception given to the first installment of his Boston work shown in public was tentative but favourable. The lunette represented the children of Israel under their oppressors, Pharaoh and the King of Assyria. With the lunette were exhibited the decorations for the vaulting of the ceiling, symbolical representations of Astarte, Moloch and Nut, the Egyptian goddess and Mother of the Universe. In the exhibit the lunette was hung in the cove of the ceiling as as nearly as possible to catch the same light that it would receive in the Boston Library.

But where a work is not only finely painted but is in addition incomprehensible, it is well qualified to attract the multitude, and so the lunette and decorations came to be the wonder of the exhibition."

To be continued

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

John Singer Sargent: Advice from the Master

"Portrait of James Whitcomb Riley"
by John Singer Sargent

"About this time Miss J.H. Heyneman arrived as an art student from American with a letter of introduction which she forwarded to Tite Street. In response Sargent invited her to his studio: 'Any day next week, after half past five, you would be sure to fine me, and I will be glad to show you what few things are in my studio.' She called the following week and noted that 'In any company he seemed to tower over every one else in the room, as much by reason of his personality as through the accident of his height... In repose his glance was often half veiled and brooding, but when he became interested his eyes lit up and he fixed them, full and sparkling, upon the speaker who, inspired by that intent gaze, would often surpass himself, or tell far more than he intended.'

Shortly afterwards he called on her and insisted on seeing, not only the sketches which she had been prepared to show him, but all those she had brought to England with her. His criticisms, as he sat on the floor where the sketches were laid out, were at once friendly and drastic. He urged the necessity of self-discipline, of never being satisfied with easy conclusions, of always trying to do the thing just beyond one's capacity. He told her that she was too ignorant to be so clever in her drawing, that any success arrived at by chance was of little value, that the education of a painter was chiefly a matter of training eye, hand and mind to work swiftly and in unison, and that what she acquired herself would always be of more interest than what she acquired through his or any other teaching.

He went on: 'Never leave empty spaces, every stroke of pencil or brush should have significance and not merely fill in... Copy one of the heads by Franz Hals in the National Gallery, then you will get an idea of what I mean by leaving no empty spaces in modelling a head, work at the fine head of the old woman rather than the superficial one of the man, I will come there and give you a criticism and haul you over the coals.'

Sure enough a few days later he appeared at the National Gallery. After looking at what she had done he said: 'Don't concentrate so much on the feature. They are only like spots on an apple. Paint the head. Now you have only nose mouth and eyes.' His criticisms were often trenchant. 'That's not a head,' he would say, 'that's a collection of feature.' 'That's not a shadow, that's a hole, there is light in the darkest shadow.' 

But though often severe, he never discouraged. No one sought his advice, whether in painting or writing or music, without gaining some new stimulus to effort. He could disapprove without wounding, and condemn without disheartening. He had the good manners which have their origin in the heart, the courtesy which springs from sympathy, and if he trod delicately it was because he had a fine instinct for what others felt. When he saw an opportunity to encourage he took it."

To be continued

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