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.)