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)