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.)