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.)